


Penetration Test

by habenaria_radiata



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Anal Sex, Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, Graphic Depictions of Violence Against Androids, Gratuitous Focus on Robot Wound Care, Hand Jobs, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Ro-blowjobs, Robot Sex, Sensorplay, Talk Techno to Me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:07:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 51,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26382391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/habenaria_radiata/pseuds/habenaria_radiata
Summary: Iwai swallowed, the sharp tang of adrenaline poisoning the lingering aftertaste of peach, and he stepped around and let himself into the underpass. No wonder they’d come here. This place was already a dumping ground for everyone who had gotten there first, piles of trash choking the inner edges and spilling out around its concrete mouth.A grimace twisted his face, and he tucked his nose into the crook of his elbow and squeezed himself into the tunnel.He stopped just as quickly. One of the bags had ripped, and jutting out of it was the pale, unmistakable shape of a foot.
Relationships: Iwai Munehisa & Iwai Kaoru, Iwai Munehisa/Kurusu Akira
Comments: 222
Kudos: 156





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to a YouTube mix when the music video for [Sentient by Perturbator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTN6cGmH2yM) played, and this entire fic manifested in my head. (CW: music video has some fairly graphic robosex and blood)
> 
> Thank you to the lovely [Cinereous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinereous/profile) and [KelpieChaos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KelpieChaos/profile) for beta-reading/cheerleading. ♥

* * *

It would have required a substantial amount of augments for Iwai to have the number of fingers and toes it would take for him to count off all the times he’d fielded complaints about how goddamned cramped the inside of Untouchable was. They always said it as if this was meant to be news to him. As if it would be an epiphany incredible enough to inspire him to climb right out of his chair and rearrange the contents of the shop like he hadn’t set it up that way on purpose.

Of course it was by design. Browsers were the fucking bane of his existence. The fewer of them he had to deal with at one time, so much the better. If they didn’t want to get stuck in the back while someone else was doing actual business at the counter, or be forced to awkwardly squeeze around them to leave, maybe in the future they’d feel less inclined to putter around like old ladies at the grocery store feeling out every piece of produce they could get their wrinkled fingers on.

But no one ever learned their lesson. Iwai watched from the corner of his eye as the front door swung open, his fingertip flicking idly against the screen of his Tab that filtered some lady news anchor’s voice through the small bud wedged into his ear. He fingered at the edge of it and dialed the volume all the way down, listening to the footsteps approaching the counter while he watched the man at the back spin around. His face contorted in irritation as he realized his aimless meandering was now limited to the back few shelves.

“Uhm...excuse me…”

His eyes rolled up towards the scrawny kid standing at the other side of the register, a thin white hood pulled up over his dark hair. Wordlessly, Iwai stared at him, and he curled his tongue around his sucker and wedged it against the inside of his cheek. The kid was clutching at the strap of the bag hanging down over his shoulder so tightly his knuckles were the same stark white as his turtleneck. When he declined to speak, the kid made a sharp noise and gripped the bag all the tighter. It was packed so full the sides were bulging around the shape of sharp angles. “I heard that you, y’know, buy stuff.”

Iwai snorted. “Yeah? As it happens, I do buy _stuff_. Just depends on what kinda _stuff_ you’re offerin’.”

Despite how thin and useless his arms looked, the kid didn’t have to struggle to lift the bag at all. He hefted it up high enough to get it onto the glass top and opened it, his pale fingers pinched around the zipper. His eyes were a shade of brown as lifeless as his face was, and completely bloodshot. Probably just some shithead little tweaker looking for drug money.

With a groan, Iwai got to his feet and slid the Tab into the cubby beneath his laptop. He’d be surprised as hell if anything in that bag was worth a damn. “Alright. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He stuck his hand in and drew out a long, rectangular piece of metal carefully wrapped in a towel. Glancing up at the boy, he narrowed his eyes at him, watched him flinch backwards, then flipped the towel open around his hands.

Shock flashed across his face before he could stop himself. Balanced over his palm was an enormous brick of RAM, gleaming silver and covered in small black nodes from edge to edge. Where the fuck had this bony little junkhead gotten his hands on this? And there was more in the bag.

Hastily, he flung the sides of the towel back over it and laid it down where he could find room, then reached into the bag again. There were three more RAM sticks the same size, along with memory banks and thick black fibers with cleanly severed edges.

There were millions and millions of yen’s worth of equipment spread out across his counters. This little shit had either gutted someone’s smartcar, which seemed unlikely…

Or he’d harvested an android, which seemed unlikeli _er_.

If he had actually managed to dig into an android’s insides, he was smart enough not to give up the game. Everything in that bag could have come from something far less heinous. There were no proprioceptors. No olfactory equipment, or tactile sensors. Most importantly, there was no reactor.

Iwai stared at the assortment for far too long before he started grabbing pieces and shoving them back into the bag one at a time. He glanced over at the regular. Whatever he had playing through his headphones was so loud he could hear individual words, and he was already rifling through another shelf like he’d forgotten how irritated he was by the kid’s presence. It made the decision at least slightly easier.

“...Two and a half mil. Take it or leave it.”

The kid’s red eyes bugged right out of his head. “Wh- really?”

“That’s what I said,” Iwai responded, chewing at the stick of his sucker in mild annoyance. He held his empty hand out. “Card?”

“Huh? But-” The little maybe-tweaker hesitated immediately, his fingers bunching at the white hoodie dangling off his thin frame. “I was kinda hoping for cash.”

Again, Iwai scoffed at him loudly, clenching his jaw and planting a hand down against the edge of his counter. “You think I keep that kinda cash on hand with shady punks like you crawling around? It’s the card or it’s nothin’.”

The kid jumped again. He fumbled around in his pockets to produce a sleek black card that he passed to him with a great deal of reluctance, and Iwai snatched it from him to flick it beneath the bright pink light of his scanner.

Mishima Yuuki. A photo of his face popped up on the screen too. He was wandering around Shibuya with a shitload of stolen parts, but he hadn’t even thought to get his hands on a dummy card? Goddamned amateur.

“I’ll throw in an extra twenty-five hundred for the bag.”

“Oh, uhm-- okay.”

He transferred the funds with sharp jabs of his fingers against the paper-thin screen and swiveled it around to face him. “This look right to you?”

The kid nodded. He finished up and passed the card back to him, two and a half million yen poorer but with a bag full of parts so valuable it made his head spin. He wouldn’t be two and a half million yen poorer for too much longer. Assuming they really were just parts and not the equivalent of a sack of organs sitting shoved between his counters.

Mishima offered him a short bow and skittered out of the shop like a frightened bug retreating from a sudden beam of light. He yanked the door open and bolted, but it didn’t swing shut behind him. Rather, another man stepped through it and reached for the lapels of his black blazer, flicking them straight again and regarding him with a smooth smirk.

Iwai tilted backward and tightened his grip on the edges of the counter.

“Reid,” he greeted, too quickly to blot out the surprise that seeped into his voice.

“Iwai.” He nodded politely and craned his neck, seemingly admiring the contents of the store. Iwai knew better. Reid needed anything he stocked here about as much as Persians needed sweaters. The regular still hanging around at the back pivoted to see Reid standing there, glared, and promptly turned white as he took in the sight of his arms. He spun back around so fast he almost knocked over a display self.

Donovon Reid tended to have that effect on people. He wore his sleeves painstakingly folded up above his elbows, the sharp white material of his oxford pressed back over the folds and flaring out around his dark skin. No matter which arm you looked at first, a civilian was always liable to be uncomfortable. One of them was covered in a mottled burn scar, from elbow to fingertip, and the other was emblazoned with a sleeve of tattoos that ended at his wrist. Iwai found himself eyeing it -- it looked different from what he remembered. All the wild greenery, flowers, and mushrooms were the same, along with the scorpion poised near the center of his forearm.

When it dawned on him, he lifted his eyebrows and nodded towards it. “A rabbit, huh? That’s new.” It was now the brightest part of the sleeve, snow white and crouched among the dark foliage with a long, silver serpent coiled above it.

The man’s eyes cut down to his own arm, and he offered him a faint smirk and a nod. “It is new. Good eye. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I’m flattered you remembered.”

Iwai wasn’t sure he bought that Reid actually was flattered, but like hell he was going to call him on it. He plucked the half-chewed sucker out of his mouth and tossed it down into the wastebasket near his feet. “What brings you here, exactly?”

Fuck. If it was Reid’s car that little shit gutted, Iwai was going to track him down and fucking gut _him_. Trouble with him was the last thing he or anyone else needed.

That didn’t seem to be the case, however. Reid frowned, a more mild thing than he would have expected it to be if he had a hollowed-out smartcar he was dealing with. Instead he simply lifted his scarred hand and dragged his fingers through the fringe of dark brown hair that hung down over his face. “A personal matter, actually. I wanted to ask if you’ve seen someone around. A young man. Dark, curly hair.”

He couldn't have been talking about Mishima. Iwai hadn’t exactly gotten a good look at his hair with that hood covering it, but he’d practically faceplanted into Donovon’s chest on his way out the door. Slowly, Iwai shook his head.

“Don’t think so.”

“Mm.” Reid looked ever so slightly troubled, his brows pinched and a thumb coming up to sweep along his chin. “If you do see him, I’d be appreciative if I were to hear about it. I’ll email you some feed with his face. He goes by Kurusu Akira.”

“Feed?”

Reid nodded and slid a hand into his pocket. A black ring glinted from his left hand before it disappeared. “He’s a part-timer at my place. I haven’t heard from him in a few days.”

Interesting. Iwai scraped his fingernails against the stubble at his jaw. “Your place is still out in Roppongi, right? Any particular reason you think I might have seen him ‘round here?”

“I poached him from the flower shop in the nearby mall. This is a little closer to home for him than I am.” Reid lapsed into silence for a moment, his brow furrowing and his sharp eyes going a little softer. “If it were anyone else, I’d chalk it up to him deciding he’d rather not work for me, but he’s a very reliable sort, and quite...dauntless is a good word for him. I trust that he would have told me if he simply found a more legitimate means of employment.”

He got the gist of it. Reid was worried about this kid. Slowly, he dropped his gaze down between his own boots to see the bag strap spilling across the floor.

“...How important to you is it to get your kid back in one piece?”

His lips curled again. Reid produced something from his pocket and tossed it into the air, right into Iwai’s cupped hands. The baggie was full to bursting.

“Consider this my thanks for even humoring me.”

“You must want him back pretty fuckin’ bad,” he muttered, bending in half to stuff the package into his unzipped bag. Reid merely chuckled in response and slipped his hand back into his pocket.

“He’s the best part-timer I ever had. The plants really like him, and I _always_ take care of my own.”

Iwai grasped at the brim of his hat and adjusted it. “Alright. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

“Thank you.” Reid straightened his back and dipped into a low bow, his green eyes closed and his hair swinging downward. “Any news at all. Good or bad.”

“Right.”

He took his leave, then, the bell tinkling behind him as the door swung shut.

Iwai closed his eyes and dropped down into his chair, slowly pushing his fingertips into the corners of his eyes until they burned.

Fuck, he hoped they were car parts.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

Only once he was safely in the elevator did Iwai lean back against the wall and exhale deeply, his fingers clenched around the thin glass body of his Tab. Christ, but he hated braving this building in particular. The narrow bag at his hip had panels inserted into the sides to thwart the scanners fitted around the front doors and littered all throughout the opulent lobby, but tech was never perfect, and it made him antsy as fuck to have possible android parts banging against his leg with every flat-footed step he took. So much for plausible deniability.

But he hadn’t been stopped. None of the doormen had even looked at him twice. He scrubbed at the side of his face and used his other thumb to scroll through his box of contacts, stopping at the very top and pushing down. A still image of Kaoru’s face lit up the screen while it connected, and some god awful pop song started playing in the bud still nestled in his ear. He felt like the world’s greatest parent exactly none of the time, but it never stung more than when he had to get an earful of Kaoru’s taste in music. He’d failed his poor son in at least one glaring respect.

He was soon spared any more high-pitched, autotuned vocals when Kaoru answered the call, and that static face became animated as he smiled down at his own screen. “Hi, dad!”

A faint smile twitched at the corners of Iwai’s mouth. “Hey, kiddo. Listen, I’m gonna be a little late gettin’ home. Got some errands to run. Can you fend for yourself tonight?”

A flash of disappointment flitted across his young face, but it was gone just as quickly as it appeared. Kaoru smiled again and bobbed his head. “Yeah, of course. I was gonna make yaki udon anyway. I’ll save some for when you get home.”

“Good deal. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Okay. Bye, dad.”

They disconnected just as the elevator doors glided open, and the floor lifted up and slid forward to spit him out onto the landing in front of the sleek black door to the penthouse. It closed itself behind him and plummeted back downward so smoothly he couldn’t hear it at all.

Well. Nothing for it. He sucked in between his teeth and lifted a closed fist right as the front door opened up. His nephew stood in the doorway, one pale hand curled around the edge and his pointed eyebrows quirked. It galled him that this little shit had actually gotten taller than him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“That any way to talk to your uncle?” He jammed his free hand down into his coat pocket and produced a new sucker, thumbing off the wrapper and popping it into his mouth. “I need a favor.”

Yamato scoffed and opened the door wider, folding his arms and staring down his nose. It was uncanny how much he favored his mother when he got snooty like that. “Obviously,” he sneered. With a curt sigh, he dropped his arms and waved him in, shutting the door behind him and turning a massive deadbolt that locked the whole thing into place. “What kind of favor?”

Ignoring him for the moment, Iwai bent to one knee with a loud pop that aged him another five years. He breathed out through his nose and tugged his shoelaces loose, slipping out of his boots and stepping up onto the black wood floor of the apartment proper. “There’s a kid I need you to trace for me. Got his info for you right here. Think you can swing it?” He passed Yamato the Tab with Mishima’s info already pulled up for him. With a mild frown, he accepted it, examining everything he’d gleaned from the card swipe with short flicks of his eyes.

“...He gave you his real card? What a goddamned amateur.”

Iwai snorted in amusement, and he watched Yamato curl his lip and toss his head in disdain. His pale hair was longer than he’d ever seen it before. He still had that ridiculous forelock that hung over one eye, but the rest of it was pulled back into a ponytail that hung past the base of his neck. The way he flicked it like that reminded him of some irritable show pony. He motioned for Iwai to follow him further into his apartment and guided him to the monstrous rig that ate up an entire bedroom on its own.

He had only the vaguest idea what half this shit was. Iwai distrusted PCs enough as it was without throwing smart toasters or other stupid gadgets into the mix. Aside from his Tab, the fanciest thing he owned was the stripped-down laptop at Untouchable that he only used for work. Hell, he still used the inventory system Yamato had programmed for him when he was eleven. He’d damn near begged Iwai to upgrade it to something that hadn’t been written almost a decade ago, but he refused. The ‘cool’ dragon background was cute and also served to mortify Yamato every time he looked at it. Iwai liked it.

The years hadn’t changed him as much as Yamato liked to think they had. The bulk of his equipment was made up of the slick black material he’d always favored as a kid, and every LED was the same bright yellow he remembered so unfondly. The PC itself wasn’t that big, but all the periphery devices connected to it made it seem enormous.

Yamato dropped down into the only chair in the room and pried the black base off Iwai’s Tab, then pushed it down into the open slot of a small machine perched right near his monitor. For several seconds, he said nothing, leaning forward as his fingers flew across the flat surface of his keyboard. Iwai still wasn’t used to watching anyone type without the clicks of decompressed plastic. It wigged him out even when he was the one doing it, despite the artificial jolts of feedback every keyboard offered in the form of tiny vibrations.

Eventually, Yamato’s pale eyes cut over to him, reflecting the bright blue radiating from the transparent monitor, and he tilted his head. “Done. I’m insulted you even asked. _Think I can swing it_. Would you also ask a fox if it could trace a rabbit that hadn’t bothered to cover its tracks?”

With another dismissive flick of his hand, he swiped two of his fingers across the massive screen projected before him, and Iwai’s Tab pinged with a notification. “There. You’re free to follow your nobody around to your heart’s content. Though I can’t imagine why you would want to. I was expecting a much more interesting favor from you after this long.”

What a drama queen. Iwai made a short noise back at him and flipped the bag open, drawing out one of the RAM sticks and thrusting it in front of Yamato’s upturned nose. “Because that nobody sold me this today. I need you to take a look at the serial number if you can.”

There was the ‘interest’ Yamato had been expecting. Both his eyebrows shot up, and he blinked several times as he took in the sight of it. Slowly, he lifted his hands and accepted it. “And you actually bought it? That doesn’t sound like you.” He flipped it over and dragged his fingertips down the black squares jutting up from the surface. At that, a more thoughtful expression overtook him. “Ah. You thought they were car parts, didn’t you?”

“I did. Less convinced of that now.”

“Oh, I’ll bet.” He smirked and flipped it longways, pushing his head back and peering down at the very end of it. “...Hm. Unfortunately for you, I can neither confirm or deny. Look.” Iwai did, bracing a hand on the arm of his chair and leaning over Yamato’s shoulder as he tapped the edge of his nail against the sliver of a groove that had been carved out from the base. “They didn’t just laser off the serial, they cut it out entirely to prevent imprints in the metal.”

“Figures.” That was fairly standard procedure for anyone who had the tools and wanted to cannibalize either cars or androids -- for professionals, which Mishima so clearly was not. “I guess I ain’t surprised the kid was just some bottom-rung runner someone else can’t be fucked to protect.”

Yamato rolled his eyes immediately. “Quite.” Iwai had always been acutely aware of how much his nephew hated the way he spoke. He’d picked up ‘prolly’ specifically to piss him off when Yamato was still living with him, but now he said it entirely without irony. He could kick his own ass for that one. “Is that everything?”

“Just one more thing.” He accepted the RAM from him, slid it back into his bag, and dug the plastic baggie out of its side pocket to push down into Yamato’s hands. “Here. Thanks for the trace. I appreciate it.”

“What-- Wait.” His eyes grew wide before they narrowed into silver slits, and he lifted the baggie to his nose and inhaled. It figured he could identify Reid’s handiwork on sight. Or smell. Abel’s influence, he was sure. “...That’s bullshit. This is ‘thanks’? You are fully aware this is extremely disproportionate compensation for something so simplistic. What exactly have you gotten yourself into now?”

“Just take the goddamned baggie, Yamato,” he snapped. “I don’t want it. Reid asked me to help him find his part-timer. I told him I would. If my ass gets hauled in by the cops, I’d rather they find the fuckin’ robo-organs on me than that shit. ‘Sides, you know damn well you and your boy are more equipped to offload that than I am.”

Yamato was uncharacteristically silent all throughout his tirade. He did little more than watch him and blink, his face smooth and his eyes trained on Iwai’s face and two of his fingers pinched around the zipper seal of the baggie. It was...unsettling. Especially when his brows furrowed, and an unusually gentle frown crossed his mouth. He cast his gaze over to the screen where Mishima’s face was still displayed.

He could damn near see the cogs turning in his head. Some days, he was sure Fuyuko had produced a kid more intellectually efficient than any android fresh off a conveyor belt had ever been.

“Fascinating. You think Kurusu is an android?” he finally said.

It startled the hell out of him. Iwai swallowed the lingering flood of peach in his mouth and jerked his hat off to scrub at his short grey hair. “You know him, then?”

Yamato shook his head and flicked his hand once, tossing the baggie down onto his desk. “Only in passing. Abel couldn’t resist making obnoxious comments last time we were at the Moon Garden. He...seemed very human to me. But, I suppose that’s the idea.” The next several seconds were silent again, Yamato staring at his monitor while Iwai stared at him. “Did he pawn off anything besides the RAM?”

“Yeah.” He plucked one of the memory banks from the bag as well and offered it up for Yamato to take. The man wasted no time fitting it into yet another periphery device so they could dig into the contents together.

“Ugh. Utterly predictable. It’s wiped.” For however predictable that might be, Yamato still sounded pissy about it. He dropped back into his chair with a shallow bounce and folded his arms, staring at the empty bank with a wrinkle to his brow that made him look both younger and sulkier than he actually was. The gold dragon winding around his right forearm was close to identical to the one tattooed onto Iwai’s own.

“Iwai.” He tucked his chin against his shoulder and dropped his eyes to see Yamato staring up at him, his pale face set into a serious sort of scowl. “If your suspicions are correct, I hope you’re not attached to the idea of recovering him in one piece. Or any. You and I both know that by the time the parts are being fenced, it’s almost certainly too late.”

“I’m aware,” he muttered. “So, what’s this mean? If I do get the kid back, his memory’s gone anyway and Reid’s still gonna be out a part-timer?” All the physical parts, he had a good grip on, but the more internal stuff was beyond him. Like the difference between building a computer and programming one. Fitting two pieces together had always made more sense to him than algorithms and data lakes or whatever the fuck tech nerds got breathless about these days.

Yamato scoffed at him and shot him a disbelieving look. “Hardly. His _local_ memory is erased and likely un-recoverable, but every android has a remote state that’s updated every few seconds. If you can secure him physically, it would be trivial to re-sync his memories, at least up to the point where he was still fully intact. Potentially even after, if his ability to connect to the server is never disrupted. Not that I expect you to understand cloud storage.”

Fucking smartass. One of his hands snapped upward, interrupting Iwai before he could even open his mouth to complain. “Just leave the memory bank with me. I’ll do what I can to see if I can recover anything that might help. I do not expect to find anything of value whatsoever, but nonetheless, I will...try.”

The gesture was the last thing he expected. Iwai softened in a split second, and he dropped a heavy hand to squeeze at the back of his neck. “Thanks, kid.”

“Eugh, don’t.” Yamato shrugged him off, his face pinched into a scowl that made Iwai smirk. “Save the ‘endearments’ for someone who isn’t well past puberty. Now let me do my job and go do yours. Your bottom-rung runner is on the move.”

Sure enough. Yamato had pulled a map up, and the red dot that was Mishima was now moving along the streets. “I’m on it.” He yanked his Tab free and slapped the base back onto it, shoving it into his jacket pocket. “Call me if you find anything at all, you hear me?”

The thought of tailing someone half his age already made him feel exhausted. Fuck’s sake. Of all the seedy shops in Shibuya, why had Reid had to come into his tonight?

He was getting too old for this shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Iwai never says he has a half-sister in the base game, but he also never says he doesn't, therefor, I have decided that it's entirely plausible for Yamato Hotsuin to be his nephew. They have grey hair, they're extremely hot, they have the same voice, were born a generation apart, and both live in Tokyo. It's canon in my heart.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

Trying to be discreet about following someone was challenging enough without it being accommodated by a moving dot on a screen the size of a fucking brick. For years, the goal had been to get Tabs smaller and smaller. Now companies were racing to churn out new models until they were too big to fit inside any reasonably sized pockets. But for once, he was grateful for the obnoxiously busy screen. He’d pinched at the corners of the map until it was scrunched at the bottom corner, the rest of the glass eaten up by various windows opened up to news sites, vibrantly colored videos, and any other innocuous thing he could think of to distract any nosy passersby from what he was actually looking at.

He should have asked Yamato for at least a small cut of whatever he got for Reid’s always stellar products. Dumbass. That had been a bad time to start feeling self-righteous. This whole job was going to be a much bigger pain in the ass than he’d anticipated.

Mishima wasn’t too far away now, at least. He’d been moving fast enough it was clear that he’d gotten into some kind of vehicle, but it’d stalled out somewhere near an old underpass he recognized. Impatiently, he lifted his head and glared at the traffic light as if to bully it into submission, but it remained bright red as the crowd of waiting pedestrians steadily grew at his back.

Iwai’s eyes darted back down to the map to see that Mishima still appeared to be stationary. He could also see the woman beside him staring over his elbow and throwing him a dirty look. Apparently one of the random videos he’d opened up had auto-shuffled to a new one with some tarted up gynoid shaking her uncomfortably realistic tits in the very center of the frame. Great.

This would be so much less of a hassle with orbital augments. They could sync up with a Tab and render the map functionally invisible to everyone else without necessitating the use of such ridiculous visual overload theater, but he’d always been uneasy with the notion of trading in his natural-born eyes to make a fucking electronic more convenient. He could suck it up. And this lady could mind her own damn business.

“Ann…”

He shifted his head and glanced down at the young lady standing at his other side. She was a pretty girl, dark hair tumbling around her ears that were oddly shaped and a little pointy, giving her an almost elfy kind of appearance. The multi-colored neon signs everywhere lit up her face in saturated pinks and blues and glanced off the beads of sweat there. His eyes dipped lower just as her fingers clenched tightly, gathering the leggings stretched around her thigh up into her clawlike grip. “Can we turn around?”

“Huh? But--” Beside her was another girl close to her age, her hair bundled up into two fat, goofy-looking ice cream swirls of blonde. “We’re almost there! Look, it’s just past the crosswalk. We can eat, and then I’ll call us a cab to take you back home. Is that okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

The second girl rubbed a hand up and down her back as her glossy mouth pursed into a frown. “You do look pretty tired. Are you sure you’re alright? Forget what I said, we can go back now if you need to.”

“No, I’m fine. It's just...heavier than I thought it would be.”

A pause, and she turned her eyes up towards him, as big and dark and hollow as looking down the barrel of a revolver. Iwai looked away and tugged his hat down. The light finally turned green, and he pushed forward along with the sea of bodies. From the corner of his eye, he could see the blonde girl helping her friend across the street with an arm tight around her waist, her gait that of someone having to re-learn how to walk.

He pulled ahead of the crowd and lifted his Tab up closer to his face, checking to see that Mishima was still in the same place. What the hell was he doing? Knowing his luck, the answer was harvesting all the even illegal-er parts he’d passed over the first time. Which would make sense. Those were the really lucrative ones. Also not what he wanted to deal with tonight.

Iwai picked up the pace. Every bit of this could be a gigantic waste of time based on a hunch that had led him utterly astray. He could be mistaken about the origins of the parts. Kurusu could be some perfectly average kid like Mishima who’d fallen into bad crowds, which had seemed more like what Reid had imagined when he’d come to him. Maybe he’d been afraid the Yakuza proved more enticing than Reid himself. But that was complete nonsense -- Reid was a foreigner peddling the best drugs in the city. Officers of every stripe had come to try and muscle him right back out, yet every one of them had met the same mysterious fate: seemingly erased from the face of the earth, and of no interest to any cop in Tokyo. If Kurusu couldn’t read the writing on that wall, Reid was better off finding another part-timer anyway.

Better to operate as if Kurusu was in immediate danger. If he was wrong, he could just kick the kid’s ass later. For now, he weaved in between other bodies and avoided every ‘undercover’ cop posted about as inconspicuously as wolves in a rabbit enclosure, occasionally checking on Mishima’s immobile dot.

The streets around him cleared out so quickly it would be comical if it weren’t so alarming instead. All signs of life steadily dropped away until he was alone in an isolated section of town, a sad, empty park filled with holographic trees to his left and the abandoned underpass just ahead. Or...usually abandoned.

A van was parked angled away from it, the doors fanned out on either side of it. He could see it bounce with subtle movements from the inside, but no bodies were visible. Iwai ducked behind one of the fake trees and used them to close the distance between himself and the van, his nerves spiking and his fingertips working at his Tab to flick away every single window but the camera. He held it low, pressed up against his abdomen, the camera lens square on the van as he crept through the park and did his damnedest to stay out of sight. If it was Mishima alone, he’d be fine. That skinny little shit couldn’t bench press a wet cat. But it was just as likely that he wasn’t alone, and all he had on him was a stun gun and an emergency handgun concealed inside his jacket. How useful that would be depended on exactly how outnumbered he was.

There was a gap between the tunnel and the park just wide enough to be problematic, but from the edge he was on, he still couldn’t get a view of the van. He was just going to have to risk it. Taking a deep breath, he ducked down and took three huge strides, whipping around the corner of the tunnel and using his Tab to see around the lip.

Sure enough. That was Mishima. The van bounced again as he hoisted a bag up into his arms and tossed it into the open mouth of the underpass. Whatever was in it hit the ground with a metallic slam that made his eyes open wide. What the fuck. Mishima had arm augments. He tossed out another two bags just like it, the same dead expression on his face that he’d seen inside Untouchable.

“Shit. Shit! Get in!”

His ribs froze over in a split second. His entire body rippled with tension, and he ripped the Tab out from around the corner. Had they spotted him? He was much less confident about his ability to knock Mishima flat on his ass knowing he had goddamned android arms soldered to his shoulders.

The doors slammed shut, and the van spun around and zipped away from him. Shit like that was so much more anticlimactic without any rubber to squeal. Kind of a shame. Slowly, Iwai chanced a peek around the corner of the tunnel. The van was nowhere to be seen, and he could just barely make out the black shape of a drone hovering in the opposite direction.

Just got spooked by nothing. Unbelievable.

It suited his purposes, though. Iwai swallowed, the sharp tang of adrenaline poisoning the lingering aftertaste of peach, and he stepped around and let himself into the underpass. No wonder they’d come here. This place was already a dumping ground for everyone who had gotten there first, piles of trash choking the inner edges and spilling out around its concrete mouth. There was a narrow strip of ground that could be navigated from one end to the other. God only knew who had bothered to carve a path out in a place like this.

The bags Mishima tossed had cleared a disgusting amount of distance. A grimace twisted his face, and he tucked his nose into the crook of his elbow and squeezed himself into the tunnel.

He stopped just as quickly. One of the bags had ripped, and jutting out of it was the pale, unmistakable shape of a foot.

Iwai had known, deep down, that whatever he delivered to Reid by the end of the week, it wasn’t going to be good news. Still, he hadn’t prepared for it to be quite this level of horrific. It was bad enough to have to tell someone you found their dead kid in a garbage heap. It was a little different to tell them you also found their dead kid in three separate trash bags. He took another step closer, and the overpowering smell of burning coolant and melted plastic assaulted him.

His stomach heaved so hard he almost choked on it, staggering to one knee and slamming his whole hand over his mouth and nose, but it was too late. The sickly sweet scent was worse than anything he’d ever smelled before, and it fucking _lingered_.

Ignoring the water stinging at his eyes, Iwai threw his other hand forward and grabbed the furthest bag. The edge of it flicked up from the rest of the bubbling black plastic. He yanked it closer to him while his other hand rooted around for the pocket knife he kept on him. As soon as it was in hand, he flipped it open and sliced through the trash bag, his mind blaring all the while.

He should not be this hot. If the kid was dead, he should have shut down before they even bagged him up. The instant anyone took his reactor, that was it. It was the equivalent of plucking out a human heart. If he was still this temperature, then--

The knife slid all the way through the bag until it split around his white face. It was him. Kurusu. He recognized those delicate features from the security cam footage Reid had sent.

Kurusu’s eyes snapped open and zeroed in on Iwai’s own, his pupils contracted down to black pinpricks of pure and utter terror.

He was fucking _alive_.

His narrow chest heaved as he gasped, his mouth working like a gutted fish and the bag shifting where he tried to move his severed arm.

Iwai fought like hell not to vomit. Coolant and oil oozed from the bottom of the bag, the unholy smell of it still overpowering to the point he was desperate not to breathe. Kurusu was still mouthing nonsense. He couldn’t say a word, and the rapid loss of coolant was melting the bag right against his skin.

He shucked his coat off and draped it around him, lifting his mangled torso up from the ground and putting a hand to his black curls. “It’s okay. It’s alright, kid. I’m not gonna hurt you.” Fuck, he was so heavy, and Iwai had a very narrow sliver of time before Kurusu burned himself out like a dying star.

Lifting his Tab up to his face, he dialed Reid and staggered out of the tunnel with Kurusu cradled to his chest.

As soon as he answered, Iwai inhaled a lungful of clear night air and coughed violently.

“Reid,” he breathed, his voice thick and choked. “I found your kid. Bring coolant.”


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

The front door nearly popped straight out of the wall when Iwai slammed it open, shoving it with one foot and carrying Kurusu over the landing. Reid wasn’t far behind him. He was staggering beneath the weight of both Kurusu’s legs, one draped over each of his shoulders and bent in half at the knee, his severed thighs leaking oil right down the crisp front of Reid’s expensive oxford. “Here. Bring him right in--”

“Dad?!”

Iwai froze in the cramped hallway, clutching Kurusu’s torso tighter to his chest. Kaoru was standing right in the living room, his face bleached in pale blues and whites from the flickering TV beside him. His eyes were wide and his mouth open, confusion and horror haunting his face. Fuck’s sake, he may as well have barged into the apartment with an armful of dismembered human. Of course he was upset.

“Kaoru, I need you to go take everything off my bed and cover it with as many towels as you can.”

“O- Okay.”

Giving him something to do at least nudged him out of his panic. He sprinted into the bathroom, his bare feet slapping against the laminate floors. With his small arms laden down beneath every towel they owned, Kaoru darted out in front of them and into the master bedroom, yanking all the bedding off it and laying down each one until it was covered from end to end. On his way to the bed, Iwai reached out to ruffle his dark hair and squeeze at his shoulder. “Just sit tight, kiddo. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

He was lying through his teeth. Kurusu was hanging on by an unraveling thread. Iwai laid him down on top of the towels, his ruined coat and all, throwing the sleeves out on either side of him while Reid dropped his legs onto the bed with a faintly strained breath. “Shit,” he muttered. “They’re heavier than I thought they were going to be.”

“Theme of the evenin’,” Iwai grumbled back, and he dug around his drawers for a pair of thick, heat-proof gloves that he pulled onto his hands. “Hand me that bag of coolant.” Reid did, puncturing it with the short end of the tube just like he’d instructed. With his gloved hand, Iwai held Kurusu’s overheated body steady, his fingers spreading across the center of his chest. The other he used to grasp the opposite end of the tube -- a long, thick, silver needle -- and stab it down into his shoulder. Kurusu jolted hard beneath him, his face twisting, but no sounds escaping him at all. It clearly disconcerted the hell out of Reid.

“What happened to him? Why can’t he speak?”

“Don’t know.”

At least they had coolant flowing now. It spilled out from the jagged edges of his body and soaked the towels, but Iwai ignored it and got to work inspecting the damage. They had done a sickening number on this poor kid. His right arm was gone completely, wrenched right out of its shoulder socket. The other was sliced off above his elbow, and they’d sawed through his middle, just beneath the artificial navel in the center of his waist. His legs were more or less intact, but they were entirely separated from his hips.

He was still struggling for air. The oxygen whistled on its way out of his severed middle, and he stared at them both with a sense of desperation he’d never known an android could even experience. Iwai passed a hand over his face and exhaled through his nose as Reid did the same.

“Is he...breathing?”

His green eyes were heavy on Akira’s chest, following the rise and fall of it. Iwai couldn’t quite help the frown that crossed him, and he yanked his hat off and dragged his blunt nails along his scalp. “You don’t know much about androids, do you?”

A beat, and Reid shook his head. He’d never seen the man so disheveled before. His hair was a mess, some of it stuck to his face where oil was smudged across the side of it, and his shirt was soaked black. “...I don’t,” he murmured eventually. A deep frown overtook him, and he stood a little taller and folded his powerful arms. “We don’t...have many of them. Where I’m from.”

He couldn’t even begin to imagine that. What corner of the world was he from that had escaped the touch of droids? It made sense, though. Reid was one of the few he knew without any augments whatsoever, and the Moon Garden was pretty sparse on the tech. Iwai motioned down towards Kurusu and adjusted his gloves. “Wouldn’t really call it breathin’. Kid’s got no lungs. Him leakin’ all that coolant made him overheat, and taking in cooler air alleviates it in emergencies. They heat up like that, delicate parts start to break.”

Sliding one knee onto the bed, he leaned over Kurusu and opened his hand, laying gentle fingers across the curve of his jaw and angling his head towards him. “Hey. I’m gonna take a look inside. You’re alright, kid.” Of course, Kurusu was utterly unable to respond. His mouth moved, but he formed no sensical words at all. Iwai pushed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, right against the corners of his eyes, at the same time his other hand came to rest at the very base of his skull. He pushed in hard with both hands, holding it for several seconds until Kurusu’s dark eyes rolled back. His remaining arm fell still, and his chest stopped moving.

“Shoulda done that earlier. Stupid,” he groused, already rolling Kurusu onto his front while Reid was left to watch. He stepped up behind Iwai and leaned over his shoulder, his arms still folded and his face slightly pinched. Iwai appreciated that he was so content to let him do whatever he needed to. That kind of trust was a rarity in both their respective businesses.

It took a bit of groping through his curly hair to find what he needed, but as his fingers pushed down into a shallow depression, a seam opened up directly down the center of his head and split apart. Two panels slid back and exposed the inside of his skull, as well as a burst of acrid black smoke that burned his eyes. Both of them coughed at the same time, leaning back away from it and Iwai swatting his arm in a vain attempt at dispersing it. “Jesus,” Reid spoke from behind his hand.

The smell of melted plastic wasn’t as nauseating as boiled coolant, but it still wasn’t pretty. Two of his fingers worked at a slat of disfigured circuitry, and he grimaced as he yanked it free. “This is why he can’t talk. Verbal processor’s completely fried.” As was everything else, he’d wager. That he still had enough undamaged processors to be conscious at all was a fucking miracle. Assuming that such a cruelty of fate even qualified as a ‘miracle’.

He sat back and sighed, deep and so hard it made his ribs ache. “You coulda told me he was a droid from the start.” The look on Reid’s face surprised him, and Iwai stared back at him and rubbed at the edge of his jaw. It was starting to ache from clenching it so hard. “...You didn’t know he was one, did you?”

“No.”

Silence fell between them, interrupted only by the subtle sound of sizzling and occasional pops when another wire shorted out. Iwai sighed again and slid a hand down Kurusu’s back where the plastic bag had melted to his skin in huge swathes of black. He pushed two fingertips against each dip of his manufactured spine until he found the right one to open up his back. Either side contracted along the inner curves of his ribs, exposing the metal edges of his spine and a hollowed-out chassis. As he’d expected, he was missing all his memory banks and the long cards of RAM. Of course he was. They were still sitting beneath the counters at Untouchable.

Reid disappeared from behind him. He sank down on the other side of Kurusu and brought a hand up to rest against the top of his curly head. His eyes were normally an earthy green that always made him think of brightly colored leaves. Now they reminded him more of the surface of a vat of acid. “Can you fix him, Iwai?”

That was the same question he’d been asking himself since he found the kid scooped out and abandoned on the ground. He chewed at his own tongue, leaning closer again and taking a second look at the contents of his open skull. “...I dunno, Reid. This is some pretty extensive damage. I’d need a bunch of specialized tools, replacement parts… Fixing the body damage is gonna be real difficult, all carved up like that. I don’t have the kind of money it’d take to do more than piece him back together.”

“No, you do.” He was already on his feet as Iwai looked up at him, his hand shoved into his pocket and withdrawing a black leather wallet. “Anything you need, it’s yours. No matter the cost. Whatever tools, whatever parts, it doesn’t matter. You’ll have it. So, can you fix him?”

Reid was not screwing around. He held a fat stack of yen between his scarred fingers, and he stared at him with an expression that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a wolf crouched in front of something that’d been foolish enough to threaten its cub. Iwai nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I can.”

“Good.” He laid the stack across Iwai’s palm and adjusted his filthy blazer, casting his bubbling acid eyes across Kurusu’s prone body. “Thank you again. I can’t believe how quickly you recovered him.”

“Trust me, neither can I,” he grumbled. He folded the stack of yen and shoved it into his pocket. “You had some real lucky timing.” Either Reid was exquisitely lucky, or Mishima was just exquisitely unlucky. No matter which it was, the kid was recovered and Iwai was out 2.5 million yen for parts he was going to have to turn right back around and use on the kid. Maybe he was the one who was unlucky. “I’ll let you know what I need. Startin’ with a new verbal processor. And some more coolant.”

“Of course.” A heavy hand fell to his shoulder, that black gold ring on his finger catching the light right near his collar bone. “You’ll have it. I should get out of your hair. Sorry about your bed, by the way. I’ll have a new one delivered as soon as possible.”

“Heh. Don’t worry about it.” He stood up, both his knees popping loudly, and he waved for Reid to follow him to the front door. Kaoru wasn’t in the living room when they passed through. Iwai hoped he was in bed. “Thanks for the help, by the way. Don’t think I coulda got back here on my own with all his, uh...pieces.”

This time it was Reid’s turn to snort. He ducked through the door and turned to face him, popping a box of cigarettes from the pocket of his blazer and lighting one up. Fuck, it smelled so good. He was dying to bum one off him. It must have been obvious on his face, too, because Reid stepped away to lean against the railing in front of his door, blowing a thick plume of smoke away from his face. “I apologize. It’s not my intention to be insensitive, but it’s been one of those nights.”

For almost a full two minutes, he stood bent over the rail, his tattooed arm resting over the edge as he smoked and stared up into the sky. “Forgive me for this hopelessly ignorant question, but…” Reid turned, his cigarette having dwindled down to almost nothing, and he frowned at the ground in consideration. “Do they feel pain? Androids.”

Iwai leaned his back against the closed door and mirrored his pose, folding his arms and dropping his gaze to the cracked concrete between his feet. “Yeah. They do.”

On some level, Reid looked as if he’d expected that. But at the same time, an expression of deep discomfort flashed across his face. He was gazing down at his scarred forearm. “...Why?”

“Couldn’t tell you, Reid.”

“Ah. I suppose not.”

His fingers flexed against the butt of his cigarette. Twisting to the side, he ground it out against the railing and tilted his hand back when he stopped, midway through tossing it before he changed his mind. Instead, he dropped the dead butt into his own pocket and sighed, smoothed down his oil-stained shirt, and bowed to him.

“Feel free to contact me for any reason at all. Parts, money, or if you think...he’s not going to survive. Don’t worry about disturbing me.”

“Understood. You’ll be hearin’ from me soon.”

“Good night, Iwai.”

He excused himself, returning to his expensive smartcar. Iwai did the same, slipping back into his apartment and locking the door behind him.

It was going to be a long night on the couch.


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

Iwai fitted the last of the RAM into its slot and pushed down on both ends, his ears pricked for the sound of it snapping into place. This was the easy part. RAM had a designated spot within the thoracic chassis, along with the individual memory banks. He worked on those next, plugging each one into its socket. He could only fit five of them, however; the remaining half of his torso was still in a partially melted bag on the floor, and the sixth socket had been ruined in the hack job they’d inflicted on him. Fixing that was gonna be a real bitch and a half.

He left the other banks in Mishima’s leather bag and sat back on one of his folded legs, his eyes heavy and his neck screaming. He was too old to try and sleep on the couch like he had, but his bed still smelled like coolant, and Kurusu’s legs had dripped oil that soaked right through the towels. Maybe he should have taken Reid up on his offer to buy him a new one after all.

Gently, he planted both his palms on Kurusu’s extended shoulder blades and pushed them down and inward, popping them back into place and grazing his thumbs over his skin. That mess of melted black plastic was streaked all up and down his back. He’d been able to tear some of it off, but not all of it. With a tiny frown, he began to scrape his nails against a long strip of it, slowly peeling off a thin sliver and flicking it off his fingertips.

The door of his bedroom slid open. Kaoru’s bare feet padded across the floor, and he peeked over Iwai’s shoulder. “Is he...okay?”

Iwai inclined his head once and raked his nails along the back of his own neck. “He’s alright. Just shut down for right now.” He could hardly blame his son for thinking otherwise. Kurusu was eerily still, not even shifting with the motions of his false breathing. “He’s gonna be fine. We got him back here before he burned up too bad. It’ll be tricky, but I think I can get him fixed up.”

For several seconds, Kaoru had no response to that. Iwai glanced over to see his eyes trained on Kurusu’s face, the android’s own eyes closed and his eyelashes casting shadows across the curves of his cheeks. Fuck, he looked like he was only a few years older than Kaoru. It was stupid. ‘Age’ was a laughably abstract concept to any droid; for all he knew, Kurusu was closer to his own age than he was Kaoru’s, his face molded into the eternal youth that only machinery could offer. Still, it rattled him.

After a minute or two of silence, Kaoru fidgeted and sat down beside him, his fingers coming to rest against Kurusu’s severed arm with a ginger touch. “Dad... Why did someone do that to him?”

Christ. Iwai’s heart dropped right into his stomach, and he peered over at him and tried not to let the discomfort show on his face. A conversation about the human condition and the cold reality of people’s capacity for breathtaking cruelty was not where he’d hoped his morning would go. He hadn’t even summoned the guts to tell Kaoru the truth about the circumstances of his adoption. How was an inarticulate dropout like him supposed to explain that some people were just goddamned evil, beyond the understanding of anyone halfway decent? Hard to believe he’d once thought changing diapers was going to be the hardest part of child rearing.

He wanted a cigarette so bad. Sighing through his nose, he dropped a heavy hand to the back of Kaoru’s neck and squeezed gently. “I don’t know, kiddo,” he answered honestly. “Most likely just some lowlife lookin’ to harvest him for parts. Droid parts are worth a lot of money, and some people don’t...see it the same as hurtin’ a person.”

“Oh.” Kaoru’s fingers twitched there, his eyes still on Kurusu’s face and then down to the frayed wires visible from the edge of his arm. “But you said they feel things, just like we do.”

“Yeah. I did say that,” he agreed, sitting back and letting his hand shift to the side to rest against his shoulder instead.

“So then, what’s the difference?”

Eugh. Iwai’s face collapsed into an expression that felt as stormy as it no doubt looked, and he pulled his hand away to rub his fingertips between his eyes. “Son, smarter men than me have been debatin’ that question since before droids even existed. I can’t answer that for you. Don’t you got school today?”

“R- Right.” He took one more glance at Kurusu before he slid off the bed. “Are you going to the shop today?”

“Nah. Shut down for a little while so I can try to get him back in shape.” Reid’s patronage was worth his time infinitely more than most of the idiots who liked to paw through his shit for two hours and then leave with nothing but a fucking keychain. Untouchable could stand to be closed for a few days. Or more.

“Oh, okay. Uhm…” Kaoru turned to face him then, his eyebrows still knit together, but a small smile on his face. “I’m really glad you’re helping him. He didn’t deserve to be hurt like that, just because of what he is.”

“...Yeah. ‘Course. Don’t be late for school.”

“Yes, sir.”

His son left him there in the bedroom, closing the door behind him with a soft click. He’d handled that better than he could have. Iwai was proud of him.

Less proud of himself. Turning back to Kurusu, a deep frown tugged at his mouth as he reached out to roll him over onto his back again. He’d lied right to Kaoru’s face. Selling off his parts had never been the goal.

He leaned over and grabbed a thin metal rod from the unrolled toolkit spread out across his nightstand. Prying his way into a chest cavity was always an enormous pain in the ass. With his fingertips pinched tightly around the silver rod, he poked and prodded around the center of his sternum, seeking out the invisible seam there beneath his smooth, flawless skin. As the end slid into the narrow divot, he pushed down harder and sliced his way through the artificial flesh, pushing up towards his neck until he found the microscopic button.

Iwai pushed down hard and held it for thirty seconds. The front of his ribcage hissed and lifted up above his sternum, then flipped open sideways. His reactor was completely undamaged. The most valuable fucking part in his entire body had remained untouched, left to burn him alive from the inside out. Everything around it was charred black.

He swallowed and sat back, staring down into its core, a tiny robotic heart that wasn’t beating.

They hadn’t taken any of his processors. They’d sold him only the cheapest parts Kurusu had inside him and left everything that would let him feel the agony of what they’d done to him. The lack of memory banks got to him the most. Kurusu hadn’t been permitted to keep anything that would let him retain his memories, or hold onto any shred of understanding of what was happening to him. Every second he spent roasting alive was like being born into an inferno, over and over again, an existence filled with nothing but confusion and terror and excruciating pain.

They’d wanted him to _suffer_.

His fingers burrowed into his thighs and scraped at his jeans.

After a full two minutes, Iwai placed his palms on either side of his rib plates and pushed them back down. He was really going to have his work cut out for him. But he was bound and fucking determined to undo the wrongs that had been inflicted on this poor kid, likely in retribution for nothing but the fact that he existed at all.

Time to get to work. First order of business was to take a more thorough inventory of everything he’d need to replace outright. He already knew he was going to have to swap out most every processor in his skull, but there were plenty of other parts that had sustained more damage than he could fix on his own. Pulling Kurusu closer, he rolled him onto his side and inspected his empty shoulder socket. Yanking his arm free had ripped all the wires connecting the two halves and ruined the ball-and-socket joint on its way out. The rest of his arm was still intact, though -- most of his limbs were. He assumed that if the point was to make him hurt, damaging his already detached limbs wasn’t going to accomplish that. They clearly hadn’t expected anyone to find him and try to put him back together.

Carefully, he maneuvered Kurusu onto his back again and reached across his chest to examine his other arm. This one was going to be a pain. All the body damage was going to require him to get his hands on replacement alloy and all the tools he’d need to work with it. He didn’t have any of that shit. He built models and offered illicit weapon augments on the sides for anyone with the scratch to pay for it, staying on the right side of ‘legal’ by making them get laser cartridges and whatever else they wanted to make it functional from someone else.

He wasn’t going to be able to do a damn bit of good with what he had on him. For now, the best he could do was to try and get Kurusu’s right arm reattached, and that still required him to get hold of a new socket joint. Among a few other things. That in mind, he climbed off his bed and began to shuck his clothes off, showered, put on a clean set, and headed out the door. He almost went back in to grab his jacket before remembering that the inside of it was scorched black. Eugh. He really liked that jacket.

Nothing for it. Iwai locked the door behind him and made the journey to Akihabara. He’d gone back and forth from it so many times he could do it in his sleep, and very nearly did, zoning out as he clutched one of the handrails on the train and stared out the windows. His sleep last night had been shit.

Akihabara was...interesting, to put it neutrally. If Harajuku was the place to be to see how weird kids could get with their fashion, Akihabara was where you went if you wanted to see how weird they could get with their augments. A tanuki couldn’t swing its balls without hitting some teenager with animated tattoos, or glowing neon eyes, or bizarre, cybernetic animal ears. He passed by one little girl who even had color-changing rainbow hair. God damn, were times changing. Anyone born in the generation before his thought he was a heathen for defiling his body with tattoos, and his didn’t even move. They must be giving their parents fits.

Most all these kids were average, warm-blooded mammals, but they looked closer to robots than Kurusu did. He had to wonder why anyone spent so much time and energy trying to make robots look more and more human when humans themselves looked less the part every single day. Kaoru’s question had him wondering too.

The building he was looking for was close enough to the station that he didn’t have to spend too long navigating his way through pubescent punks with more money than sense. He slipped inside it and tugged his turtleneck up higher, until it covered the gecko tattooed on the side of his neck. Generally, he didn’t care enough to hide it, but legitimate part dealers were even more leery about them than onsen attendants.

He’d been here enough times he knew the whole song and dance by heart. All the cabinets would be locked down and secured like they were gallery paintings. Iwai headed straight for a smooth white counter shaped like a crescent moon around the young lady standing behind it, and she smiled for him and pressed both hands to her middle to bow politely. He returned the gesture, but with his face set in an awkward grimace as he tried not to stare at her arms. She had neon pink strip lights embedded into her skin that lit her up like she was some kinda street car, all the way from her shoulder down to her wrist. There were even matching lights curled up inside the shell of her ears. Ugh. Kids these days.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Er, yeah. I need a ball-and-joint socket. And some other things. Got a list right here.” He laid his Tab on the countertop and turned it to face her, then grabbed his ‘license’ from his wallet and passed it over to the girl as well. Yamato had done a damn fine job on that one. It was about as legitimate as a forgery could be -- it scanned like a real license and hadn’t failed him yet. Far as anyone could tell, he was an engineer and legally permitted to buy the sort of parts that other civilians couldn’t get within spitting range of. She handed the license back to him with a smile, and he returned it to his wallet and glanced up at her face. Her hair was as bright pink as the lights in her arms.

“Please wait here.”

“No problem.”

A few minutes later, she returned with everything he’d asked for and rang him up. He forked over a chunk of the yen Reid had left him with and watched her box everything up and seal it. They did not fuck around with their security. She even took his hand and pushed his finger down against the seal, locking it with his fingerprint. If he’d even looked at her funny, they would have thrown him out on his ass, but it was worth it to know they’d do the same for his benefit as much as for theirs.

“We thank you for your purchase. Have a nice day, sir.”

“Same to you, miss.” He shoved the box beneath his arm and bowed his head to her, tugging lightly at the brim of hat. It wasn’t everything, but it was a good start. Iwai took his leave and climbed back onto the subway, the box pressed tightly to his side.

With any luck, he’d have Kurusu’s arm functioning by the end of the day. But first, he’d have to endure the trains again. It probably said a lot about him that he was more comfortable in the company of an inert android than he was with other people.

He wasn’t sure any of it was good.


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

Iwai could already tell the next few hours were going to be hell on his back. He really didn’t have a good space for this kind of shit in his apartment, but lugging Kurusu’s torso back to Untouchable wasn’t exactly an option. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Instead, he resigned himself to the bed and rearranged everything on it, peeling off the ruined towels and grabbing one of the few surviving ones from the far corner of it. He climbed up onto the mattress, his back pressed to the wall, and pulled Kurusu into his lap. On his side like this, his empty socket was pointed up at him, and his face rested against Iwai’s thigh.

His tools were laid out beside the opposite leg. He picked up a long, thin screwdriver, its tip so tiny it was almost impossible to see the grooves in it with the naked eye. The magnifying glasses pushed up the bridge of his nose helped, however. He adjusted his fingers around the handle and eased the tip inside Kurusu’s shoulder, fitting the head down into the first screw and pushing his thumb into the side. It spun and pulled it out neatly, the little screw dangling from the magnetic tip. Iwai plucked it off with his fingers and dropped it down onto a black cloth he’d laid out so he’d be able to see them to put them back in later. He’d lost one too many to the floor not to take precautions.

It was a mindless task, and a little tedious. But it was a tedium he didn’t find himself bothered by. As soon as the last screw was out, he used the tip of the screwdriver to pop the rim of the ruined socket out of place and tossed it aside. They’d ripped it out with such force that the socket had actually turned inside out.

The new joint fit him perfectly. Once it was installed into Kurusu’s shoulder, he tested it out, rolling it with his fingers and rotating it in every direction. It made him feel better about the idea of booting the kid up afterwards. With one working arm, he might feel slightly less helpless than he would with zero.

Iwai repeated the process on his detached arm and connected the two. Now came the difficult part: re-soldering all the goddamned wires they’d ripped apart. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but it was a pain in the ass when there were so many small ones to contend with. Reaching for his Tab, Iwai put on one of his random playlists and set it to the side again. Filling the silence with music helped. He got to work once more, his hands curling around Kurusu’s ribs and lifting him gently, repositioning him with his head in Iwai’s lap and his newly reattached arm draped over his thigh.

He needed his heat-proof gloves again for this one. Iwai tugged them on and adjusted each one before he grabbed the spark pliers. Honestly, for all his inner complaints, this job was much better than it used to be. He lined up two of the corresponding wires and squeezed the pliers shut around the naked metal. True to its name, it sparked faintly as it melded the snapped off ends together. That done, he cut a tiny strip of black casing from the sheet of it near his hip, curled it carefully around the repaired wire, and picked up his heat wand to melt it into place. He used both his fingertips to pinch it smooth.

Then he did it again. And again. There were so many of them that the manual work took up a good hour or two, and he was so absorbed in his task he worked right through lunch. Eventually he wound up on his knees on the floor, Kurusu sprawled out on his back with his arm pushed up over his head so he could reach the ones folded up against his armpit. By the time every wire was reattached and recased, and his arm was pushed back into place, Iwai’s back ached exactly as much as he’d anticipated it would. He sat back with a loud groan and reached behind him to rub it. And he wasn’t even done yet. Urgh.

At least there was only one more step. Iwai stood up, both his knees popping and his arms lifting up above his head. He could do this. Home stretch. Plus, after he was done, he’d feel less like a gross old man with a beautiful robot sex potato in his bed.

He crouched back down to his knees and reached for the bottle of Dermaset he’d put on the floor, shook it thoroughly, and uncapped it. If anything in this whole process could be considered the ‘fun’ part, it was this one. Picking up a clean paintbrush, he dipped the bristles into the pale liquid, a color that reminded him of a desaturated peach. Iwai held Akira’s bicep steady and used his other hand to sweep the brush up against his armpit, painting a ring over the exposed metal where his skin had torn. It was like putting on the finishing touches of a completed gun model. With precise strokes, he lifted the brush higher and covered the seam on the side of his arm and up to his shoulder. He had to flip Kurusu onto his chest again to get the back side, keeping him propped up against his free forearm so he didn’t smudge the fresh skin on his bedding. The last thing he wanted was the texture of his sheets permanently etched into Kurusu’s flesh.

Now it was just a matter of waiting. Iwai tilted backwards and blew softly against the wet patch, helping it to dry a little quicker. Fucking hell, he was starving. But this was more important.

The instant the new skin was dry, he laid Akira down onto his back. In its current state, it was easy to see the difference. The skin was molded right up against the metal, flat and offputtingly static when it moved. He grabbed a second bottle, as well as a syringe, and plunged its needle into the stopper to draw the clear liquid out of it. He slid the needle up beneath the freshly applied skin and injected the lubricant, watching in slightly grossed-out interest as it began to absorb it.

When it was done, it was as if he’d never been injured at all. His skin was uniform and as flexible as it should be when he moved Kurusu’s arm. Generally, he wasn’t one to polish his own brass, but that was some damn fine work on his part. He just hoped it felt that way for the kid too, rather than just looked like it.

Iwai grabbed the edge of the bed and pushed himself back up to his feet, then lifted Kurusu higher until his head was cradled by the pillow and his arm was comfortably at his side. It wouldn’t do much of anything for Kurusu, but it did make him feel better leaving him like that. And now he could feed himself. He loped into the kitchen to throw together a quick, easy lunch, which for him meant microwaving a frozen sandwich and eating it right over the sink so he didn’t have to do any dishes.

Kaoru was due to be home in a few hours. Maybe he could take a short break, let his back get some rest, and take Kaoru out with him to get some dinner and swing by the Moon Garden. He hadn’t heard from Reid to know if he'd picked up any of the things he’d offered to get. Might as well go check. Plus, he hadn’t been out that way in a while, and Kaoru always got a kick out of seeing the exotic stuff Reid grew. There were some kind of bioluminescent flowers in the back that Reid was real selective about showing off.

With his sandwich gone, Iwai rinsed the crumbs off his fingers and padded into the living room to collapse onto his couch. He turned the TV on and settled in to watch some mindless show that was generous with car chases and shootouts and sexy people in leather jackets.

Only a few minutes later, he felt a small hand shaking at his shoulder. “Dad?”

He startled awake and blinked several times. Kaoru’s face came into focus as he stared back at him dozily. He could feel the imprint of the couch cushion in his cheek without even touching it. “Shit,” he muttered. “Didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

Kaoru looked amused as he sat upright and rubbed at both eyes with the heels of his palm. “It seems like you needed it. Do you feel better, at least?”

Truth be told, he did not feel better. Naps always made his chest feel disgusting and heavy, even before he had a son old enough to be studying for entrance exams. “Sure,” he said instead, yawning into his forearm. “...What time is it? Seems early for you to be home.”

He confirmed it when Kaoru flipped his own Tab around to let him see the clock. “Yeah, I am. I got a ride from Mr. Reid!”

“You did what now?”

Ignoring him, Kaoru turned away and put his Tab down on the kotatsu, dropping down to his knees and digging around in his school bag. “He asked me to give you these.” From it, he unearthed a shiny new verbal processor and a proprioceptor as well, along with a full package of coolant. Iwai stared at it all before his face collapsed into a stormy scowl.

“Once these are installed, you and I are gonna sit down and have a serious talk about you acceptin’ rides home from strange dudes.”

“Wh- he’s not strange! He came to our apartment.” Kaoru looked genuinely surprised by his reaction, a puzzled little frown on his face. “Mr. Reid is really nice. He asked if Akira was okay and then we talked about school. He’s your friend, right? I thought it’d be okay.”

Urgh. “... _Mister_?” he finally asked, emphasizing the English. He wasn’t expecting Kaoru to look embarrassed, but the bridge of his nose turned pink.

“Well...he’s foreign! I thought it’d be more polite.”

Iwai found himself chuckling. He climbed to his feet and dropped his palm to Kaoru’s dark hair, ruffling it playfully. “S’ppose that’s fair. If I hear about you takin’ rides from anyone who isn’t Mr. Reid, you’re gonna be in serious trouble, got it? Even if they say they know me. How’d he even know where your school was, anyway?”

“Alright, alright.” After a beat, Kaoru shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. He passed me by on the walk home. He actually had to turn around when he saw me. I think he was already on the way here.”

That made sense, and made him a great deal less uneasy. Iwai relaxed and accepted both processors from his son. Kaoru followed him into his bedroom, his face brightening and a smile on his mouth. “Wow! You already fixed his arm? That’s amazing.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and let his fingertips brush gently across Kurusu’s bare shoulder. “It doesn’t even look like he ever got hurt.”

“That’s the idea, right?” Iwai took the other side of the bed and set the processors down on the bed. He hadn’t anticipated Kaoru wanting to watch, but he certainly didn’t mind. Might be educational, even. “I’m gonna turn him over. Mind the tools, kiddo.”

With one knee braced against the bed, he slid his hand along the back of Kurusu’s neck and lifted, laying him out flat on his chest and adjusting his head so his face was nestled down into the pillow. Beside him, Kaoru busied himself with transferring the toolkit down onto the floor, fastidiously keeping each one exactly where it was on the roll. Iwai still couldn’t believe his luck that he’d just been handed such a good kid. Almost literally.

The bed now clear of tools, and with Kurusu’s cranial chassis opened up again, Iwai held an empty hand out to Kaoru. “You wanna help me out? Grab me one of those tweezers.”

“I’m on it!” He hopped off the bed to fetch one and laid it across Iwai’s palm. These in hand, he slid them into Kurusu’s head and pried the partially melted proprioceptor out. They’d really wedged that one in there good. Iwai frowned and chucked it onto the floor, and he handed Kaoru the tweezers back so he could spread his fingers around the sides of Kurusu’s face and tilt his head slightly. The inside of his skull was just as much of a charred mess as his chest had been.

“Kaoru, can you do me a favor? Go get me some cotton balls and hand me the bottle of solvent there on the floor.”

Kaoru did, sliding off the bed again to go fetch the cotton balls from the bathroom. He brought them back and passed them over to Iwai, along with the solvent. It was nice to have a helper around. He was obviously eager to do some good for Kurusu’s benefit.

“Perfect. Thanks.” Iwai accepted the tweezers back and used them to pluck a cotton ball from the bag. He dipped it into the solution and pushed it inside Kurusu’s skull, sweeping it back and forth and digging it into the tiny grooves. The ball was entirely black by the time he pulled it free again, but the inside was nice and clean and shiny now, gleaming silver under the dull light of his bedroom. “Alright, hand me the proprioceptor first. Er, it’s the one closest to your hand.”

“Oh, okay. Neat.”

With Kaoru’s assistance, he fitted both of the new processors into place and slid the cranial panels back into his head. He got Kurusu turned over onto his back once again and arranged him there against the pillows. No doubt it was just a trick of his imagination after mucking around to fix the insides of his head, but his face looked more serene now and less like a perfectly preserved corpse.

“What are you gonna fix next, dad?”

He glanced over to see Kaoru leaning over him curiously, his eyes open wide and his glasses sliding down his nose. It was a fair question. Iwai followed his gaze and rubbed at his jaw in consideration.

“I can’t get the rest of him attached until I get the tools I need from Reid, so...I think I’m gonna try and re-route the coolant piping so he’s not leakin’ everywhere. Then we’ll boot him back up. I need to make sure his new processors are functional. In fact, why don’t you go order us some dinner while I get that started? Card’s in my wallet.”

“Sure thing!” Kaoru disappeared from the room to go do just that. It gave him the opportunity to hunt down some spare tubing and clamps so he could begin the process of reconnecting his severed coolant pipes.

In about an hour and a half, they were fed and he’d finished the job. Kurusu was still not in great shape, but he was significantly better off than he was, and no longer in danger of oozing all over the goddamned place. He had a working arm, a closed circulatory system, and fresh coolant injected back into him. This was it. Moment of truth.

He shooed Kaoru out of the room and sat down at Kurusu’s right side. One hand curled up against the back of his head, and the other pushed down between his eyes. The rubber pipes poking out from the bottom of his torso like black entrails went taut with the rush of fluid through them. It was working. He was on again.

Swiftly, Iwai pulled his hands away and watched his face. Kurusu’s features were still frozen, but he could see his eyelids twitch. Then they opened in a flash, his pupils dilating and contracting back into place as the tiny cameras inside readjusted themselves post-reboot.

His arm shifted against Iwai’s thighs. Each of his fingers flexed, curling and uncurling. Just the sight of it made his heart lurch. Hell yeah. He’d have to do more tests on it to make sure there were no hiccups, but for now, he was happy to consider it a small win that he could move even this much.

And then Kurusu looked over at his severed arm. His curly head lifted up from the pillows as he stared at it, his steely eyes wide and the rest of his face a blank canvas. When he struggled to sit up with only half a torso, Iwai pressed a hand to his chest. “Hey, easy, kid-”

His arm struck out like the bite of a cobra. Kurusu’s hand clawed at the air, aimed straight for his throat with enough force to crush his windpipe. But he didn’t. His fingertips hovered a mere centimeter away from Iwai’s skin. His whole arm shook. With every quivering clench of his fingers, Iwai could feel the very edges of his nails ghost against his neck. Someone had installed a blocker on him.

Everyone always said you could tell an android by their cold, dead eyes. But that was bullshit, and Iwai had always known it, even before now. Kurusu’s irises shared a color with steel, but nothing else. They were bright and alive and flashing with frustration and raw, angry fear.

“What did you do to me?” he whispered.

Iwai met the eyes zeroed in on his face and slowly lifted a hand, curling his fingers around the curve between Kurusu’s stretched out thumb and forefinger. The other hand slid around the crook of his elbow, and he eased his arm downwards.

“Kid. Relax. I ain’t here to hurt you, I’m here to fix you.”

Kurusu’s fingers twitched in his grip. He did relax as he’d bid, though, the tension thrumming through his forearm easing somewhat. Iwai squeezed at both his hand and his elbow and nodded towards him. “Name’s Iwai Munehisa. I found you like this in an abandoned underpass. Soon as I get you put back together, I’ll take you to see someone who can get your memories synced back up. That okay with you?”

He was quiet for a long time. If he hadn’t already whispered that sharp demand, Iwai would be convinced he’d installed a bad verbal processor. Kurusu finally refocused on his eyes, however, his hand trembling in Iwai’s grasp. So, not a perfect repair job. He’d have to take another look at the kid’s stabilizers.

As he nodded, Iwai’s shoulders slumped. He patted the inside of Kurusu’s elbow and loosened his hold on him, sitting back and resting that same hand on his knee. “I can’t promise I’ll get you back to ‘good as new’, but I can promise I’ll get you as close to that as I possibly can. Deal?”

Again, Kurusu nodded. He allowed Iwai to lay his arm back across the bed, where he proceeded to drag his fingertips across the coolant-soaked sheets beneath him. His head fell back against the pillow as well, and he stared up at the ceiling in a daze. His face was a goddamned work of art. There were none of the physical tells of fear in his body. He didn’t breathe harder (hell, he didn’t breathe at all), he didn’t swallow or shrink on himself. But his face moved with such exquisite humanity it made his chest ache.

He was _afraid_.

His bottom lip even trembled when he opened his mouth and tilted his head to look back up at him. “My name is Kurusu Akira,” he murmured. His eyebrows were curved and furrowed, the artificial skin creasing between them. “...It’s nice to meet you, Iwai Munehisa.”


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

It took longer than he’d have imagined it would to get the kid settled in. Iwai had never handled an android with no memories before; if someone had asked him, he would’ve assumed it’d be like dealing with a very large metal baby, something that would have to be taught all the basics from scratch.

He would have been very mistaken. The verbal processor he’d installed made Kurusu entirely fluent in Japanese, and if there was something he didn’t know, he could reach into the ether and download it from the internet. It was both fascinating and a little eerie to observe him. When Iwai had handed him the remote to his bedroom TV, Kurusu examined it for a bit and found the exact make and model of both the TV and the remote. It only took a few seconds for him to start using it, and his explanation was that he’d saved the schematics directly to his memory.

It was getting close to midnight by the time he slipped out of his bedroom and closed the door. He’d thrown most of his pillows up against the wall to let Kurusu lie propped up against them, as close to sitting as he could get when he didn’t have any hips. Iwai had grabbed the last pillow on the bed, and he clutched it beneath his arm and mentally prepared himself to sleep on the couch for another excruciating night.

He fell still at the edge of the living room. Kaoru was stretched out across the sofa, the TV flickering across his sleeping face. A mild frown etched itself across his mouth, and he stepped over to the kotatsu to pick up the remote and turn it off. It wasn’t until he put it back down that he noticed Kaoru’s glasses were folded up and laid down beside it. He was even lying beneath a blanket, and one of his pillows was stuffed beneath his cheek.

He was sleeping in here on purpose.

A hot lump lodged itself against the back of his Adam’s apple, and he stood there like a fucking idiot for almost half a minute, gripping his own pillow to his middle and staring down at his sleeping son.

One of his hands hovered over Kaoru’s dark head before he thought better of it. Instead, he stood at the end of the couch and reached down, drawing the covers down over his bare feet. Iwai left him there and slipped into Kaoru’s room, threw the pillow down onto his bed, and collapsed on top of it.

Fucking hell, it was nice to lie down on a proper mattress for the first time in two days. Iwai passed out in no time, his body shutting down almost as hard and fast as Kurusu’s had. He didn’t rouse again until the light shining in through the window was the bright blue of early morning and his normal alarm was trilling in his ear. He hadn’t thought to turn it off when he decided to temporarily close Untouchable down.

Distantly, he could hear Kaoru shuffling around in the apartment, likely getting ready for school. He was probably waiting for his slovenly dad to get the hell out of his bedroom so he could get dressed. Groaning, he rolled off the bed and pawed at the door, pushing it to the side and lumbering into the kitchen like a dozy bear.

“Morning, dad!”

Iwai mumbled back something unintelligible and rooted around in the cabinets. Coffee wasn’t usually his drug of choice, as it were, but he needed to get some caffeine in him if he didn’t want to wait a whole hour to be a functional adult again. He really needed his bed back. While the coffee maker did its job, he leaned up against the counters and watched Kaoru hard at work at the stove.

Sometimes he was sure Kaoru didn’t even need a parent, he was so self-sufficient. He made up two platefuls of omelet rolls like a proper chef and handed one of them to Iwai. “Here you go. I put mostly carrots in yours.”

He squinted down at it. There was definitely some green shit in there, but like hell he was going to complain. They both ate standing up in the kitchen like heathens, Iwai shoving entire rolls into his mouth while Kaoru bit his in half and chewed his more sensible bites. Together, they made embarrassingly quick work of the rolls. Iwai grabbed his empty plate from him and plopped them both into the sink. “Thanks for breakfast. You’re gettin’ to be a regular gourmet.”

“Heh. You’re welcome. I’m gonna go get ready for school.”

“Roger that. I’ll be in there with Kurusu if you need anything. Er, Akira.” Iwai watched him go and poured himself a mug of coffee, dumping sugar and milk into it until it was palatable. He didn’t exactly keep creamer on hand, so milk was just going to have to do. Clutching the mug in his hands, he made his way back to his bedroom and rapped his knuckles against the door.

He wasn’t sure why he did that. It wasn’t like Kurusu could make himself decent, his crotch wasn’t even attached to him yet. Still, announcing his presence seemed more polite than just barging into the bedroom, even if it was his. He nudged his door open and let himself inside, blowing lightly at his coffee. “Mornin’.”

Kurusu stared at him from the bed. Last night, he’d wrangled him into one of Kaoru’s t-shirts, a soft, loose red one with some kinda colorful mech on it that seemed vaguely insensitive now that he was looking at it properly. At least it was doing its job. It hung down low enough to cover up the protruding tubes that resembled robot intestines just a little too closely for his comfort. “Good morning,” he said back. His voice was low and soft and a little deeper than he would have expected, judging from his face. Even after speaking to him yesterday, it still caught him a little by surprise every time he opened his mouth.

The look on his face surprised him too. Kurusu seemed strangely intent, staring hard at something near his chest. “You okay?”

“That’s coffee.”

Iwai blinked and peered down into his mug. “Er. Yeah,” he agreed, lifting his head again. “Do you...want some?”

Kurusu shook his dark head, and when he fell still, the little curl between his eyes fell right back into place to drape against the curved bridge of his nose. “I can’t.”

Well. Now he felt like a dick. Grumpy, Iwai made another face and moved to sit down beside him on the bed. “Right. Sorry. Didn’t mean to rub it in.”

“Rub it in?” For a few seconds, he paused, then offered him a smile that looked so authentically amused he couldn’t help but be amused right back. “Oh, I see.” Maybe ‘entirely fluent’ was a stretch. Kurusu had a hard time with idioms and anything else that wasn’t meant to be taken literally. At least until he downloaded whatever new definitions he needed when he was looking to bolster that mental dictionary.

Iwai took a slow sip. Kurusu watched him the whole time, his eyes following the path of the mug. “What does coffee taste like?”

Again, it gave him pause. He brought the mug away from his face and glanced back at Kurusu. His features were schooled into a look of mild curiosity. “Tastes about the way it smells. Here.” He twisted to the side and shuffled the mug around with both his hands, thrusting the handle out towards him. Kurusu hesitated, but he did reach up and curl his fingers inside it, succumbing to his curiosity and pulling it closer to his nose. It was surreal not to hear the sound of him inhaling, or see his nose move at all.

“It smells good,” he said.

“Yeah. It does sometimes. Most of the time.” Carefully, Iwai accepted it back and rested his shoulders against the wall. He did nothing more than drink for the next ten minutes, sipping at his sugary coffee and watching whatever dumb cartoon was on before he came into the room. After he finished, he set the empty mug down on his nightstand and faced Kurusu again. “I spoke to Reid last night.”

“Reid?”

Ah, fuck. Right. Iwai rubbed at the back of his head. “Reid is...uh…” Scowling hard, he got up to grab his forgotten Tab and came back, plopping down so hard he made Kurusu bounce a bit. It took some judicious searching for him to find the right word. “Here we go. Let’s just call him our ‘benefactor’. He’s helpin’ me help you. He said he’s got the rest of the tools I need to start repairin’ the body damage you took. With any luck, we’ll get you back on your feet by the end of the week.” In both a literal and a figurative sense, actually. He allowed himself a private little chortle over that.

“Oh.” His eyebrows furrowed delicately. “Is Reid the man I belong to?”

Iwai’s amusement stopped cold. Fuck’s sake, why was everyone so content to ask him questions he was wholly unqualified to answer? Iwai was desperately uncomfortable now, and ever so slightly annoyed Kurusu even assumed that he knew. “Uh. I don’t...know that you really _belong_ to anyone.” Hell, Reid hadn’t been aware he was an android at all. He paid him like he was just a normal part-timer. If anyone could claim ownership of him, it sure wasn’t him. “Like I said before, I found you in that underpass. Whatever you had goin’ on before that, I couldn’t tell you.”

“No?” Kurusu looked puzzled by the very notion of that. He tilted his head, finally looking away from him and down at the remote. As if compelled, he picked it up into his palm and turned it over, balancing it over the very tip of his middle finger. “Why did you help me, then?”

Christ. Kurusu hadn’t even been conscious a full twenty-four hours, and he’d already learned not to anticipate compassion or basic decency? Was that something every droid just knew by instinct?

And was he even really wrong? Iwai had only helped him because Reid had asked him to. And paid him. Sort of. But…

If he’d just found him like that, had stumbled upon him as a bystander by pure happenstance, he had to believe he wouldn’t have just left him there. Even in the Yakuza, it had never been in him to be that coldly mercenary. Iwai sighed and rolled his neck, glancing over at him to see Kurusu gazing back. Like the abyss. Or whatever.

“I helped you ‘cause you needed help. You don’t gotta be owned like a car or somethin’ for someone to care about what happens to you.”

“Oh.”

The silence that fell around them was heavy. Iwai had never really spoken to an android like this before. He didn’t even like having serious heart-to-hearts with his own kid. Hell, when Kaoru had asked where babies came from, he’d sent him some kid-friendly e-book about puberty and they never spoke of it again. Trying to help an android grapple with his own existence was on an entirely different level, and far beyond his pay grade.

So instead, he watched Kurusu spin the remote in impossibly smooth circles, flawlessly balanced on his fingertip and nudged to stay in motion with delicate little flicks of his ring finger.

“Thank you,” he murmured, without looking up. “For helping me.”

“You’re welcome.” Iwai moved on the bed and turned sideways, folding his legs so he could face him. “Well, you’re conscious now, so I figure I’d let you make the choice for yourself. I got your arm repaired. Is there somethin’ you’d like me to focus on next?”

Talking shop was so much easier than anything even emotionally adjacent. It also worked to distract Kurusu from whatever musings had his face so withdrawn. He let the remote topple off his fingers and pushed up on his hand, his shorn bicep shifting on the other side of him. “Yeah. Not being able to walk blows.”

It took him so aback that Iwai almost slid right off the bed, staring at him with wide grey eyes. Then he laughed, hard and low as he shook his head. “Already teachin’ yourself slang? Stay out of those parts of the internet if you know what’s good for you, kid.”

Kurusu was smiling at him when he laughed. It was nice to see him look a little less glum. “What were you going to fix next?”

“Hm.” No sense in keeping anything from him. It was his body, and he deserved to know what Iwai was going to have to do to get him back in shape. “If you’re eager to get walkin’ again, I’ll have to focus on fixing your hips.” Iwai lifted himself onto his knees and shuffled until he was in front of Kurusu, raising the bottom hem of his borrowed shirt and following the diagonal slice that’d bisected him completely. “This right here? It’s gonna be a lot to fix. Probably the most time consuming repair, ‘cause I’ll have to rewire everything that got cut. Fix your coolant pipeline again, replace one of your bank sockets, and then the body damage itself. That’s gonna be...a process, so be prepared.”

Kurusu listened to all of this, absorbing it in silence and following Iwai’s finger where he pointed to the most significant damage. When Iwai sat back on his calves, he frowned softly and grazed his fingertips along the slightly curled edges of his chassis. “My plan was to do your other arm, get your legs re-attached to your hips, and then stick you back together. But you don’t need to worry about that. I’ll shut you down before I fix your middle.”

“What? No.” He shook his curly head firmly, frowning and pushing his hand harder into the bed. “I don’t want to be shut down again.”

“Wha- Why?” This stubborn little punk had no idea what he was asking. Iwai scowled, and he pinched at one of the loose tactile sensors that jutted from the edge of Kurusu’s waist. The kid gasped immediately, bucking hard as his hand slid right out from beneath him and sent him crashing down onto his back. “That? Imagine that, but a thousand times worse. You got the equivalent of a bunch of exposed nerves hangin’ off you. I can’t just re-solder all those jagged edges back together. I’m gonna have to cut it clean and meld brand new alloy there. It’s gonna hurt, kid. A lot.”

Despite the impossibility of such a thing, Kurusu looked slightly nauseated. He struggled to straighten himself back on his nest of pillows, and he reached around and gripped at his severed arm. “...Would you do my arm first, then? While I’m still conscious?”

“Kurusu--” Iwai paused and curled his hand beneath the end of his bicep. It was a hell of a lot less surface area to deal with. And it might convince Kurusu that letting him knock his ass out for the bigger job was going to be a lot kinder than the alternative. “Fine. We’ll do that, then.”

“Thank you.”

He let go of Kurusu’s arm and rubbed at his face. “Don’t see why you don’t want to be shut down so bad. It’s just the same as sleepin’. Right?”

A harsh frown slid across his mouth. Kurusu shook his head and squeezed harder at his bicep. “I just don’t want to. Even if it is the same.”

“Suit yourself.”

Strange kid.

While they waited for Reid to arrive with the new equipment, they watched more TV together, Kurusu’s long, slender fingers still clutched around the frayed edges of his arm like it was a security blanket.

The whole time, at the very back of his mind, Iwai wondered exactly what happened to androids when they were shut down.

Judging from Kurusu’s reaction, it certainly wasn’t dreaming of electric sheep.


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

Iwai couldn’t remember the last time he had one of these bad boys in his hands. His eyes slid over the sleek metal body and followed the edge down to the sharp prongs that thrust inward like pincers. The laser it could emit was so powerful it was potentially blinding, but Reid had been kind enough to throw in a face shield to go with it. He wasn’t particularly pressed about it. His eyesight would be fine.

He turned the saw over and flexed his fingers against the black grip. Nice and sturdy. This thing looked high-end as hell. Reid must have spent a fortune on this alone, nevermind the brand new bricks of alloy covering the bottom of the box. Kurusu had no idea how lucky he was that someone even had the desire to fund his repairs, much less the means to actually do it.

“Will that do it for you?”

Oh, right. Reid was still standing in his apartment. Iwai jerked his head up and made a little noise of acknowledgement, like he was fully aware Reid had been there the whole time. “Yeah. This’ll do it. For now, I mean -- might need a few other parts when I start workin’ on his trunk, but I should be able to get his other arm fixed now. Possibly his legs. Haven’t looked at his hips yet,” he admitted. “He’s more of a handful awake than I thought he’d be.”

Reid’s eyes widened the slightest fraction. “He’s awake?”

“Yeah. Booted him back up last night.” Shit, had he been meant to alert him? He figured Reid might have wanted to wait until all his memories were back. Then again, could he blame him? If Kaoru had been the one injured to the extent that Kurusu was, he’d have to be pried away from his side, regardless of how much it hurt for his son not to remember who he was. It was obviously a little different for the two of them, but still -- he understood it.

Fortunately, Reid didn’t seem angry. Rather, his eyes darted in the direction of Iwai’s bedroom door.

“Can I see him?”

Like hell he was going to tell him no. He ducked his head and led the way to his room, opening the door and moving out of the way so Reid could follow him inside. Kurusu was sitting right where he’d left him. Of course he was, it wasn’t like he could just get up and wander away whenever he felt like it. Their appearance soon caught his attention, and he looked away from the TV screen. He startled at the sight of Reid.

For a painfully long, awkward moment, they did little more than stare at each other, Kurusu’s eyes flickering over to Iwai in question every so often. The silence was broken by a faint huff of uncertainty, and Reid frowned, shifting his weight to one foot and lifting a hand to adjust one of his cufflinks in a transparent attempt not to fidget. “You don’t remember me?” He sighed and dropped his arms before he approached the bed. “Ah. No. I suppose you wouldn’t. My apologies, Akira.”

Whatever anyone thought about how genuine an android’s emotions were, there was no doubt that Kurusu was perfectly capable of recognizing them. His eyes trailed up and down Reid’s face, his own arranging itself into an expression of soft upset and guilt. He rubbed at his bicep and tilted onto his arm to face him as much as he could without turning. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “That I forgot.”

To both their surprise, Reid actually laughed at him. The sound of it dispelled whatever had Kurusu looking like a kicked puppy, and he reached over and squeezed at the android’s shoulder. “I see that bad habit of yours is simply in your nature. You have a tendency to apologize for all the shitty things other people have done to you. You don’t need to be sorry. I’m the one who is sorry.” Reid bent in half, an arm tucked against his narrow waist. “My name is Donovon Reid. Prior to...this, you were working for me at my flower shop. I know that doesn’t mean much to you right now, but trust that I’m very fond of you, and I’m happy to see you looking better.”

His words seemed to both enlighten Kurusu and also surprise him. Then his face scrunched, and he glanced down at himself. “I looked worse than this?”

Both of them laughed at the same time, Iwai’s a little bark of unexpected mirth, and Reid’s smooth and deep and pleased. “Believe it or not!” Visibly fascinated, Reid examined his arm and held his hand out. “May I?”

Kurusu hesitated, but he did ultimately nod and rest his pale hand atop Reid’s. The man’s other hand lifted up to Kurusu’s bicep, his scarred fingertips pushing the loose sleeve up over his shoulder. “Incredible. Iwai did an amazing job repairing your arm. It doesn’t look like it was ever damaged at all.”

He squeezed Kurusu’s fingers and let him go. “I knew I left you in extremely capable hands. I’m sure it’s frustrating for you to be so limited, but I assure you, Iwai and I are both doing our best to get you mobile again.”

“Yeah. I know.” The smile he regarded with jarred the hell out of him. It was the first time Iwai had seen him look so _sweet_. “Thank you very much, Mr. Reid.”

There was that English again. He would bet his entire wallet that Kaoru taught him that. Reid merely smiled back at him and dropped a hand to his curly head. “I admit, it’s mostly selfishness on my part. I’ve missed having you around the shop.” Nodding for him, Reid turned away and faced Iwai instead, gesturing towards the door with his tattooed arm. “Speaking of which, I ought to get back and let you work. Akira, it was nice to see you again.”

“You too. Bye, Mr. Reid.”

Iwai took him back to the front door and stepped out first so Reid didn’t have to squeeze around him in the narrow entryway. For as composed as he’d been in the room, he could tell the man was making a concentrated effort to pretend he wasn’t as bothered as he actually was. They’d only been outside for a few seconds and he was already groping for the box of cigarettes in his blazer pocket. It felt too weird to ask if he was okay. They weren’t that kind of friend. Hell, they weren’t really any kind of _friend_ so much as they were tentative allies.

So instead, Iwai cleared his throat and closed his door behind him. “That saw wasn’t cheap. As soon as I’m done with him, you can take it back, as close to new as I can get it.”

“Hm?” Reid’s head tilted ever so slightly, and he peered at him with furrowed brows before he shook his head. “Ah, don’t worry about it. I’m sure you can make more use of it than I can. And reselling is a pain in the ass. I’ve never been much for offloading anything myself.”

Much like the last time they’d stood out here together like this, Reid pivoted on the heel of his expensive black shoe and leaned back against the railing in front of his door, pulled out his box of cigarettes, and slid one out. The paper was black with a metallic gold edge around the filter. As he looked over at Iwai, however, he paused and slid it back into the box. “I fully anticipate the answer to be no, but were you, by any chance, able to ascertain anything about what exactly happened to Akira?”

“Nah.” Iwai folded his arms and looked past Reid’s shoulder. In the distance, he could spot the black shape of a police drone puttering around in the pale grey sky. Hadn’t even noticed how overcast it had gotten. “Yamato says he’ll be able to restore his memories once I can safely get Kurusu over to him. I don’t got the kind of equipment he needs for that, so I’ll have to take him to their place to get it done.”

“Of course.”

Words seemed to desert them both. Reid was lost in his own head, his arms crossed like Iwai’s and his eyes narrowed at the concrete beneath their feet. Eventually, when he snapped out of it, Reid blinked at him and shook his head. “Thank you again. As always, call me anytime you need anything else.”

“Yeah. ‘Course.”

“Enjoy the rest of your day, Iwai.” Reid pulled away from the rail and slid both hands into his pockets. Iwai watched him go before he let himself back into his apartment and closed the door behind him. Something was very obviously weighing on him, but Iwai had other things to worry about. Namely how hellish his job was about to become when the kid was still being a stubborn little shit about shutting down.

Iwai grabbed the box with a grunt of effort and hefted it into his bedroom. That alloy was heavy as a motherfucker. He dropped it on the floor near his bed as Kurusu watched him curiously, his arm draped over his ribs. “What’s that?”

“Tools. You ready for me to get to work?”

“...Oh.” Despite not having any real skin, or veins, Kurusu somehow managed to look green at the prospect. And it was a perfectly avoidable fear. Was he afraid that if Iwai shut him down, he’d just never boot him back up again? “Yeah,” he finally said, his sharp features pulling into a look of determination. Ornery little bastard. “Let’s do it.”

In spite of himself, Iwai chuckled quietly and dragged his nails through his short hair. “If you’re sure. Quicker we get it over with, the quicker I can get you two working arms.”

“Right.”

Kurusu’s dark eyes followed him as he got down to his knees to dig into the box. He laid the saw out at the foot of his bed, along with a thick strap and the adjustable board he’d asked for. At least the most painful part would also be the shortest. Iwai left everything in place and moved to the edge of the bed, leaning forward and sliding a hand beneath Kurusu’s back. “Gonna need your shirt off, kid.”

He raised his arm and allowed Iwai to peel the shirt up over his head and cast it aside. As soon as it was off, he tossed his dark hair out of his eyes and peered at him from the corner of them. “Why do you call me ‘kid’?”

“Er.” Iwai didn’t really have a good answer for him. It was a fair question. “...Force of habit, I guess. You prefer somethin’ else?”

Lightly, Kurusu shrugged and toyed with the remote again. He seemed to like having something in his hand to play with. It wasn’t something he’d noticed a lot of androids doing before, but that didn’t necessarily mean that it hadn’t been programmed for flavor, like the idle animations in Kaoru’s video games. Whatever it was, it was a quirk he found strangely charming. “You can just call me Akira. I know why they gave me a ‘family’ name, but it doesn’t really mean anything.”

Iwai made a face at him. “How do you figure?”

Again, he rolled his shoulders and regarded him with a faint wrinkle to the bridge of his nose. “I don’t have a family. Akira is a name that feels like it’s mine more than Kurusu does. Also, I’m not a kid.”

Interesting. “Alright. Akira it is.” Iwai wandered away from him, gathering up everything he’d left at the foot of the bed and dropping them by Akira’s hip. “You seem pretty confident about that lack of family for someone who has no memories.” He laid down the board first and glanced up to note the puzzled frown on Akira’s mouth. “What is it?”

“Why shouldn’t I be? Besides, it’s not a matter of confidence. Androids don’t have families. I wasn’t born.”

“Tch.” Iwai scoffed at him and scowled, his fingers closing around Akira’s sharp jaw and turning his face up towards him. “You don’t need blood or an umbilical cord to be family. Kaoru knows that, and he _is_ a kid.” Staring into Akira’s wide, dark eyes, he fixed him with a little squint before he nodded and let go of his jaw. He planted his palm against the lowest point of his back and tugged smoothly, laying Akira flat with a tiny noise of indignation for his trouble. “Now be still.”

This was not going to be fun. For either of them. Iwai positioned the board beneath Akira’s ruined arm and finegled the strap beneath it, looping it high around his bicep and binding it as tightly as he could. If Akira was strong enough, there was still a danger of him snapping it, but hopefully it would hold fast. Akira lay on his back and gazed up at the ceiling, blinking every so often and clenching his hand on the other side of him. Despite all his best efforts to hide it, Iwai could tell.

Akira was nervous.

Most emotions were pretty basic. High-minded types who studied shit like philosophy in school liked to argue about whether droids could truly feel emotions the same way as humans, but Iwai had never understood why it was so contentious to suggest that they could. It made sense enough to him. If humans were wired to respond certain ways to certain stimuli, then it stood to reason that droids could be wired similarly. Who was to say one was more authentic than the other?

The more complex ones, though...the neverending debates seemed more justified to him when it came to anything more nuanced than fear, or pleasure, or sadness. Pride being one of them. Akira didn’t want him to know that he was afraid, and Iwai got the distinct feeling it wasn’t for his benefit.

He laid a hesitant hand over the kid’s arm and patted a little awkwardly. If pride really was what Akira was feeling, he sympathized. “Gimme just a second. I’ll be right back.”

He hunted down one of the big handkerchiefs he used when he was working on models and folded it up into a long, thick rectangle. It was about all he had to use, so it would just have to do. Slipping back into the room, he stood on the left side of his bed and rested a knee against it, draping the folded handkerchief across Akira’s eyes.

“What are you--”

“Relax. Don’t take this off, you hear me? The laser gets bright as hell. It’ll damage your eyes if you try to get a look at it.” Akira went still, then nodded for him, allowing Iwai to tie the handkerchief in a knot at the back of his head.

“What about you?”

“Got protection of my own. Don’t worry.” Iwai stood and grabbed hold of the face shield Reid had left him with. He slid the goggles on first and knocked the shield down over the rest of his face, tugged on some thick gloves, and pulled the board out longer to brace it with his knee. If Akira moved, he was liable to cut wrong and damage him worse.

Iwai let his weight sink down against the end of the board to hold it steady and took a deep breath. He was probably making Akira more anxious, hesitating like this. If he did it right, it would only last a few seconds. Just suck it the fuck up and get it over with.

His fingers closed around the thick handle of the saw and gripped it so tightly the scars on his knuckles were practically invisible. The shitheels who’d cut him the first time had done it at an angle, so it couldn’t even be a smooth, downward slice. Fuckers. Whatever. No sense bitching about it now.

Swallowing against the rock caught in his throat, his eyes cut down to Akira’s blindfolded face. “Alright, ki-- Akira. I’m gonna count to seven, alright?”

“Seven?”

Iwai pressed his thumb to the switch and pushed down, the laser bursting to life between the two prongs and buzzing loudly, like the world’s most intense fluorescent light. He held it just above his mangled arm and steadied his grip. “One. Two.”

He sliced downward at the same angle, the laser gliding right through the alloy of his arm like it was butter.

Akira _screamed_. 

He jolted up from the bed, his spine sharply curved and his mouth open around cries of ungodly agony. His bicep strained against the strap so hard it actually did tear. Iwai shut the saw off just before Akira shoved his hand right into the path of the laser and clawed at his arm.

His stomach roiled violently as he lifted Akira up off the bed and held his face to his chest, each fresh sob like a razorblade right through his soul. He’d never felt like a monster more than he did in that moment. Squeezing his eyes shut, he grabbed a handful of Akira’s dark curls and gripped his back, gritting his teeth so hard he was sure his molars would shatter.

As Akira gasped against him, he paused and eased him backwards. “Akira?” The kid went as silent as if he’d flipped a switch on him. Iwai jammed a thumb beneath the blindfold and tugged it up over his forehead to see his dark eyes wide and as every bit surprised as he was. He slid his hands to the side and grasped both his biceps instead. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t stop,” he begged, his arm snaking around Iwai’s side and clutching the back of his shirt. “It doesn’t hurt when you do that.”

“Huh?”

Oh, hell. Both his tactile processors were inside his head. He hadn’t thought anything of it, assuming they were both functional when he’d determined that Akira could still feel things -- it hadn’t occurred to him that only one of them might have been damaged.

Akira could only process sensations with one now. He was overriding the excruciating pain with his touch alone.

His fingers tensed before he lowered his hands, letting his palms brush up and down Akira’s quivering biceps. He kept his face buried against Iwai’s sternum and his arm almost crushingly tight around his middle. He was obviously terrified of the idea that he might pull away.

Iwai dropped his chin to the top of his curly head and closed his eyes. With one arm, he held onto Akira’s back while the other hand stroked his bicep over and over. Occasionally, he traced the slope of his shoulder with his callused thumb. “It’s alright,” he murmured into his hair. “You’re alright, kid.”

The room was silent now, but his mind echoed with the haunting sounds of Akira’s shattered screams.

They were only interrupted by the memory of Reid’s voice, asking him if robots felt pain and _why_.

He still had no answer for him.


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

“Iwai?”

He remained silent, tilting his Tab to get it parallel to Akira. The kid was staring up at him from the bed with a weird look on his face, but Iwai continued to ignore him. This goddamned bootleg app was so finicky. Akira’s arm shifted slightly, and he looked up at him with a sharp glare and lifted his foot to nudge it back into place. “Hey. What’d I say? Keep that arm right there.”

“What are you doing?”

“Measurin’.”

Iwai had painstakingly laid out the remaining half of his arm to be exactly even with the other one. If the angle was off, it’d totally ruin the calculation. He held his Tab steady while the camera captured Akira lying flat, allowing the app to analyze the length of his arms and spit out the exact size and shape he’d need to fill in the gap. Only problem with that was he had to stand up on his bed to fit Akira in the frame properly. He was so glad Kaoru was at school. It felt as skeevy as it probably looked.

The instant the app was finally done, Iwai stepped back from him and climbed down so he was no longer looming over him and his naked torso with a camera. He helped Akira sit up again and tilted the Tab towards him to show him the mesh the app had produced. “See this? After shavin’ off the rough edges, there’s gonna be a small gap there. Gotta fill it in with some new alloy. If I don’t get it exactly right, your arms are gonna be different lengths.”

“Oh.” Curious, Akira leaned in over his shoulder and studied the screen. “Do you have to make that piece yourself?”

“Sure, but it won’t be too bad. This tells me the dimensions I’ll need to make it. Better than trial and error for damn sure.” Plus it had been awhile since he worked with molding alloy. Might be fun to get back into it. Theoretically, he could use the app’s mesh to print a matching piece, but he didn’t have access to a 3D printer that got hot enough to melt the kind of alloy he was working with. He’d just have to do his best to craft it himself.

Iwai forced himself up off the bed to do just that. He could feel Akira’s eyes on him the whole time he lugged the adjustable board back onto the mattress and fetched one of the alloy bricks to place on top of it. That done, he hunted down his face shield and a pair of new goggles he’d bought specifically for Akira. They snagged his attention for sure. Akira perked up against the pillows, leaning on his good arm and peering at them with his head cocked like an inquisitive bird. “What’s that for?”

“It’s for you.”

“I get to help?” It was cute to see the interest that unfurled so quickly across his face. Made him feel bad to have to ruin it immediately.

“Not so much for this. Molding the alloy is a one-man job. Mostly. Thought you might like to watch, though.” Iwai grabbed the laser saw next, then finally unearthed his blowtorch from storage before he settled in at Akira’s side again. He hadn’t had an excuse to use it in a long time. “If you want to help out proper, we can work on fixing your legs together after your arm’s back in one piece.” Akira very obviously liked the sound of that. He smiled and bobbed his head, still resting the majority of his weight on his good arm and moving the other as if he could gesture with it.

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

“Alright, first thing’s first. Goggles.” He picked up the new pair and twisted towards him, stretched the band back over Akira’s curly head, and slid them down over his eyes. “Need to adjust ‘em?” Iwai steadied him with both his hands so Akira could do just that, keeping him upright while he used his working hand to get them where they were comfortable on his face. Once he was settled, Iwai did the same for himself. He yanked his own goggles overhead and flipped the heavy-duty shield down over his face with a flick of his fingers.

This would be so much easier to do at the kotatsu, but it would be harder for Akira to watch from there. He was resigned to it. Curling his fingers around the body of his Tab, he laid it out above the board and pointed to the screen. “We need to cut a sliver just a little wider than this measurement right here. Gap’s not too big, so we don’t need a big chunk. Might need more when we get to fixin’ your trunk, but we’ll worry about that later. Reid went a little overboard on the alloy, so we’ll have plenty.”

Akira looked both amused and a small bit flattered by that, flattening his palm against the bed once again and angling towards Iwai and his improvised workstation. “Is he nice? Mr. Reid?”

“He’s pretty damn nice to you,” Iwai pointed out, his eyes cutting over to Akira’s pale face. “This alloy is expensive. Well, all this shit is, really. It means a lot to him that I can fix you. I dunno, though. I don’t know him well. We’re mostly business acquaintances.” He spared another glance to make sure the kid’s goggles were on properly, and when he was satisfied, he picked up the saw and fingered at the button.

“Oh, wow. That is bright.”

“Tell me about it.”

He’d been making models for long enough that he’d gotten pretty good at eyeballing the measurements he was aiming for. Iwai examined the brick in front of him and positioned the saw just a little within the edge of it, squinted, and brought the laser down to slice a clean wedge of it right off the long end. With his thumb, he cut the saw off and lifted the strip into his hand to inspect it. “Hm… That should be fine. Let me see your arm?”

Surprised, Akira leaned away from him and scooted over to the side more. “The broken one?” He lifted his left arm up. Iwai wrapped his fingers around it and raised it a little higher to get a good look at the hollow inside. His exoskeleton was decently thick. No wonder he was so damn heavy. He surrendered Akira’s arm back and reached for the saw again, turning it back on and flipping the freshly cut wedge onto its side to make one more slice down the length of it. The strip now shaved to his liking, Iwai swapped the saw for Akira’s arm again and held the alloy up against the edge of it. “Yeah. That looks good.”

Akira seemed mystified by the whole process. He took his arm back yet again when Iwai let go of it, and he tilted his head to try and get a peek at the inside of it for himself. “Why do you have to get it perfect right now? Couldn’t you match it with the rest once it’s on?”

“A lot of reasons.” Since he was in a prime position for it, Iwai poked his finger into the inside of his shorn bicep and flipped one of the loose wires out. “I know it’s hard for you to see it where the cut’s at, but your arm’s packed pretty full. Lots of wiring in there, coolant tubes, your humeral rod... Basically, there’s a bunch of shit in the way.” Carefully, he pushed the wire back inside and released him. “I could prolly meld the strip to it and then sand it down to match, but you need a special dremel for that, and even then it’s a pain. It’s a real slow process. Then all the stuff I mentioned. It’s a lot easier on the both of us to get the alloy the exact right shape first so I don’t risk damagin’ anything internal.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

Iwai nodded a little absently and slid the saw away. Shouldn’t need it for the next bit, but he wanted it on hand for when he needed to cut away the excess. “Alright, here’s where we get to start shapin’ it.” Except that he’d forgotten his gloves. Damn it. He had to clamber his way off the bed and track them down, tugging them on as he came back and dropped down onto the bed. “Your outerbody and skin are pretty well heatproof, but I’d still recommend you usin’ protection if you’re gonna be playin’ with anything hot like this in the future. Your insides are a lot more delicate than your outside is. Trust me.”

It was doubtful he needed to tell him that; he’d had to learn that the hard way. Akira merely nodded his acknowledgement and pitched forward slightly. “Is that what the blowtorch is for?”

“That’s right. ...You wanna hold it?”

Akira’s eyes practically glittered with his excitement. Of course he did. Android or no, playing with fire was fun. Iwai regarded him with a fond smirk and folded an arm around him, supporting his back so Akira could use his working hand again without falling over. “I’m gonna keep the alloy upright. I want you to pass the torch over it a few times.”

“Yeah. I can do that.” He took it from Iwai and looked it over, his eyes flitting up and down to take it in. Iwai considered teaching him how to use it, but Akira was quick to disabuse him of the notion that he needed to. After a few seconds of concentration, he adjusted his grip and motioned towards the workstation with his head. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“‘Course you are.” One arm remained looped around Akira’s waist, the other hand sliding the alloy strip down over the edge of the workstation so he could grab it by the end and flip it up. He angled his arm and used the very tips of his fingers to keep it standing up straight. “It’s all you, kid. Er, Akira. And careful where you point that thing.”

Akira rolled his eyes at him. Rude little shit. He cocked his fingers around the trigger and turned it on, his arm perfectly steady as he guided the torch up and down just like he’d directed. “Like this?”

“Yeah. You can put it a little closer to the metal.”

He obeyed, passing it over a few more times until Iwai directed him to stop. Akira killed the flame and carefully laid the torch back down on the board. “Is that good?”

“Yeah. You did great.” Iwai waited for him to get his arm situated before he drew his own away from Akira’s back and prodded at the alloy with a gloved fingertip. Nice and malleable now. “Okay, I’m gonna need you to hand me your, uh...arm.” To his credit, Akira handled it more gracefully than he did. With Iwai’s support, he twisted and reached out for his dismembered arm, grabbing it by the hand and offering it to him. He had a hard time envisioning himself just passing someone one of his hacked off limbs so nonchalantly.

For the next hour, Iwai showed him how to work the alloy. They used his severed arm as a guide, matching the new alloy to the clean edge Iwai had already cut. It took some finesse to get it just right, and some very mindful trimming of excess. But soon enough, they had the new piece shaped and fitted into place, and he allowed Akira to be the one to use the blowtorch again. Only when it was sufficiently cooled off did Iwai lift the arm into his hands, bending it at the elbow and allowing Akira to admire their handiwork.

“Whaddya think? That gonna do it for you?”

“I think you’re the expert, not me.” Amused, Akira thrust his bicep out, holding it still until Iwai took the hint and fitted both pieces together. “I can’t really see, but I trust your judgment.”

Iwai snorted and coaxed his arm up a little higher, bending this way and that to get a good look at it from all angles. “Then I’d say we did a pretty bang up job. Now you can tell people you helped fix your own arm.”

The laugh that was Akira’s response sounded soft and almost shy. He was balanced on the tips of his spread fingers, his eyelashes cast low beneath a veil of the kind of modesty he hadn’t thought the kid was even capable of. “Yeah, I guess I can say that. Thanks for letting me.”

Kaoru arrived home from school not long after, giving them the opportunity for a much needed break. He carried Akira into the living room so the three of them could watch TV together while he ordered dinner and let his poor back get some rest. It was almost a shame he’d have to surrender him back to Reid once he was done with repairs. Kaoru was already attached to him after only a couple of days, eagerly talking about his day at school while Akira hung onto every word with an adorably serious expression. As the TV droned in the background, Iwai sat in the corner of the couch with his ankle curled around the other knee and his arm draped along the back of the couch behind their bent heads where they hunkered down together.

Even after everyone was finished eating, and they’d gone through the episodes for two different shows, it seemed cruel to separate them. Kaoru was engrossed in Akira’s recounting of the work they’d done today, along with the explanation of what they’d have to do after, now that his arm was ready to be reattached. Much as he didn’t want to, he dropped both his legs and dragged himself up off the couch with a groan. “You got homework?”

“Oh, sorry, dad. I’ll do it right now.” He disappeared into his room, leaving Iwai to bend forward and heft Akira up into his arms with a grunt of effort.

“Sorry I’m so heavy.” Akira’s arm slid around his neck as Iwai shook his head at him.

“Nah. Can’t much help that, can you?” He carted him into the bedroom and got him situated flat on his back so he had an easier time working with both halves of his arm. Akira wouldn’t be able to see it well, but he didn’t want him to be bored out of his mind either. He flipped the TV on for him and slid the remote under his working fingers. “Here. Put it on whatever you want. It’s gonna take me awhile to get you rewired.”

Akira nodded his acknowledgement and lifted the remote, cycling through channels while Iwai popped a fresh sucker into his mouth and got to work. The taste of cola on his tongue drew his face into a sour grimace. Fuck, he hated grabbing the blue ones when he wasn’t paying attention. Little kids with candy blue lips and tongues were cute. It was remarkably less so when you were pushing forty. He didn’t care enough to grab a different one, though, and he settled in with his tools spread out near the foot of the bed and Akira lying quietly before him.

He got to work on the coolant pipes first, digging them out from the mess of wires and joining them together with tiny dabs of glue that would bind the rubber. Those out of the way, he pried out his torn wires one at a time, melding the ends and re-casing each one.

About halfway through his task, Akira turned his head towards him and frowned softly. “Why are you helping me?”

A pause, and Iwai lifted his eyes and scowled around the sucker stick. He’d long since finished the candy and now had the taste of partially-dissolved paper lingering in his mouth. Ugh. “Already told you why, kid.”

“No, I mean -- why are you helping me so...thoroughly?”

Iwai sat back on his calves with a cut wire still pinched between his pair of tweezers and a befuddled crease to his brow. “I’m not sure I catch your meanin’. I don’t think Reid wants me to bring him back a part-timer with one arm.”

“That’s not it.” Akira huffed at him. He’d told Reid he couldn’t breathe, but he could get close to it when he used his air reserves to be a sassy shit. It was cute the way it blew the little curl over his nose. “I mean that I don't think anyone else would be that concerned about my arms being the exact same length.”

For a few seconds, Iwai did little more than blink at him. Then he scoffed loudly and yanked the chewed up stick out of his mouth. “Tch. I ain’t no casual. I take pride in my work.”

He had no idea why that was so very amusing to Akira, but he tittered at him from behind his hand and smiled. “Oh, is that it? I see.”

“Yeah, it is.”

Iwai squinted at him as Akira laughed and rolled his head to the side again, his chin tucked against the smooth curve of his shoulder. “Then I’m glad I didn’t get stuck with a casual.”

“God damn right.” He got back to work with a faint jut to his jaw that Akira informed him was very piranha-like, but he ignored him when he still had tiny, fiddly wires eating up his attention. It took him another hour to finish with them. He was starting to get bleary-eyed by then, his back screaming for him to lie down flat, but he was stubbornly determined to have him with two working arms before the night was over.

“Can you move your fingers, kid?” he mumbled, gazing down at his long, slender hand. He had real pretty hands, almost like a lady’s. Experimentally, Akira flexed them, and his fingers closed against the bedding. “Perfect. Alright, let me finish up. Almost done.”

Last thing to do was to get the humeral rod re-attached. With all the wires in the way, there wasn’t a chance in hell that he’d be able to do any melding with it. Best he could do would be to use some industrial-grade adhesive and pray it held up. Iwai did just that, picking up a bottle of it with a long, narrow nozzle and wedging it in between the wall of wires to squeeze a small circle around the center of the rod. He did the same to the clean edge of his arm. He could weld the outside of it properly in the morning.

“Here goes nothin’.” He grasped Akira’s elbow and pushed up, pressing the two halves together and holding his arm perfectly still to give the adhesive time to bind. It generally only needed half a minute or so, but he was leery to let go prematurely. He gave it two before he pulled away and sat down on the edge of the bed. “How do you feel?”

Akira didn’t respond right away. He bent his arm, slow and steady, opening and closing his hands and twisting his wrist. “Like I have two arms now.”

“Good. Great. That’s what I like to hear.” And now he was dying for sleep. Iwai clambered over Akira’s prone torso and collapsed onto his back, utterly uncaring of his ruined mattress and his sheets that smelled like oil and robot lube.

“Iwai?”

“Gimme just a second. Gonna rest my eyes for a minute.”

They sank shut, and his back settled into place. He was so comfortable he didn’t want to move. Damn, he’d really missed his bed.

One minute became two, then three, and in five, he was unconscious, sprawled out and passed out as hard as the morning after a bender.

In his dreams, he felt fingers in his hair.


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

“Iwai.”

He woke to the sensation of fingers on his arm, jostling his shoulder lightly. Bleary-eyed, he stirred there in the bed and turned his head to see Akira’s curly head and big grey eyes filling his vision. “Iwai, wake up.”

“Mmmup,” he grunted back at him. “What?”

“Someone’s calling you.”

Something slid into his hand, and Iwai lifted it to his face and jabbed blindly at the screen until the vibrating stopped. He popped the Tab to his ear and let his heavy eyelids slide shut again. “‘sis Iwai.”

Reid’s smooth voice sounded from the other end. “Are you awake?”

“...I am now.” Slightly more lucid, Iwai pushed himself up to a sit and dragged his callused fingertips over both his eyes. Fuck’s sake, he couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep in his bed. In his good turtleneck, too. It was going to smell like coolant for at least the next two wash cycles.

“Ah. My apologies. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Nah. Your kid woke me, technically,” he noted, staring Akira down with narrowed eyes as he smiled back at him like an angel. Please. Even his hair curled up from his skull like little black devil’s horns. “What’s up?”

“I’m having a new mattress delivered to you and wanted to make sure you were ready for the delivery men to arrive. They ought to be there soon.”

“Oh.” As it turned out, Reid was underselling it a little. Only seconds after he spoke, there was a knock at his front door, and he scowled colorfully at the wall and pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. They sure are. Aren’t they s’pposed to call you before they show up?”

He did not appreciate the warm chuckle Reid responded with. “They did. That’s why they called me. They said you weren’t answering. I’ll let you go. Sorry to disturb you this morning.”

“It’s fine. Thanks for the mattress. Talk to you soon.” They both disconnected, and Iwai rolled out of bed and shoved the Tab onto his squat black nightstand. “Gimme just a second, kid.”

“It’s Akira.”

“I know what your name is.”

Another knock sounded before he reached the door and tugged it open. Sure enough, there were two delivery men in clean white suits and a brand new mattress propped up on its side and covered in plastic. “Are you Iwai Munehisa?”

“That’s me.”

He pushed the door open all the way and vacated the narrow entrance, directing them to his bedroom. While they were busy dragging the mattress, Iwai hurried to throw his pillows into the closet and start stripping the bed. Akira squawked in surprise as he tugged the fitted sheets out from beneath the corners and watched them snap right up over him. It was cute. The first man was already waiting by his door, though, and they obviously weren’t going to be able to swap out the mattresses with him still lying in the middle of it. He bent forward to grab Akira by the waist and haul him up into his arms. “Sorry ‘bout all this. I wasn’t exactly ready for you guys.”

The poor dude did a double-take when he saw Akira, both his arms wrapped around Iwai’s neck and one of his coolant tubes visible just past the hem of his dumb mech t-shirt. “Good morning,” he said politely.

Iwai adjusted his arms around him and cleared his throat. “Don’t mind him. He’s a work in progress.”

Akira bobbed his head, schooling his features into a look of deathly seriousness. “I lost my lower half in a horrific helicopter accident.”

“Wha-” He whirled on him, scrunching his nose sharply and pursing his mouth. “I ain’t lettin’ you watch TV unsupervised anymore.”

On either side of his new mattress, the men exchanged puzzled looks. A beat, and the one closest to him looked back at Akira curiously. “They don’t even make helicopters anymore, do they?”

“‘Course not,” Iwai scoffed. “He’s full of shit.”

Akira’s outrage made itself known immediately. Apparently he puffed up like a spitting cat when he was mad. “I am _not_ ,” he snapped, going rigid in his arms before he paused, processed, faltered, then blinked. “Oh.” After another pause for several seconds, he seemed to practically deflate, turning his face back towards Iwai. “Did they really stop making helicopters? That’s lame.”

They stood on the side of the room and let the two men work, digging his mattress out of the frame, sliding the new one in, and hauling the old one out. There were black oil stains all up and down the top of it, and one of the guys was clearly trying not to scrunch his nose at the smell. As soon as they were gone, he brought Akira to the door and locked it behind them. Now that he had a clean bed again he was going to have to get a tarp or something for when they fixed his legs.

Iwai carried him back to the room and sank down onto the new mattress. He set Akira down beside him, and they both sprawled out on their backs at the same time, Iwai groaning loudly and folding his arms up over his head. “Fuck, that’s good. Guess I can amend my opinion of Reid. He’s pretty nice to the both of us. What do you think?”

“Mm…” Akira pushed with one arm, rolling over and tapping his fingers along the top of the mattress. “It’s soft. It doesn’t really feel much different to me than the other one, though.”

“Heh. I’m sure it doesn’t.” He sat up slowly, smothering a huge yawn into the crook of his arm and reaching up to muss his own hair. “Must be nice, not havin’ any creaky old man bones.” Twisting to the side, he dropped his heavy legs to the floor and forced himself up from the bed. “Alright, lemme get dressed and get some food in me, then we’ll get to work on your legs. Prolly need a shower too.”

“What about my arm?” Akira rolled his elbow towards him and pointed at the silver ring above it. There was still a black line where he’d reconnected them.

“Oh, right, yeah. We need to get that seam melded too. Thanks for remindin’ me. If you’re not too fussed about it, I figured I could apply some fresh Dermaset all at once when you’re whole again.” Akira nodded slowly. Iwai ruffled his curly hair and left him there on the bed, stripping his shirt overhead with one hand grasping at the back of it. He tossed it into his hamper and shed all the rest, throwing them in as well. “Just yell if you need anything.”

Eugh, the shower was a good call. Even standing under the spray of hot water, he could detect the faint scent of oil and coolant on his skin. He scrubbed himself raw and washed his hair, dried off, and changed into a clean set of clothes. Contrary to what he’d told him earlier, he could hear Akira listening to the TV by himself. Unsupervised. Obstinate little brat.

Iwai left him to it anyway, jamming his feet into his boots and heading out of the apartment. It ended up being a little longer than he’d intended when he made a detour to pick up a tarp for the bed. Still, he was able to grab breakfast and get back to the apartment in under an hour, so as far as detours went, it wasn’t the worst one he’d ever taken.

Just like yesterday, he got their work station set up on his bed. He spread the tarp out, laid the board out on top of it, and brought everything else they’d need to work on his legs together. Truth be told, he'd been so worried about the rest of him he hadn’t even glanced at his legs to see the damage yet. Iwai grabbed those last, having to lift them one at a time and drape them at the foot of the bed. Just from a cursory glance, they didn’t look mangled by any means. The only damage appeared to be the wiring, which likely meant they’d pulled them out of their sockets like they’d done to his right arm.

Which also meant most of the damage was probably going to be to his pelvis. Seemed like it was finally time to unearth it and get to work on the most labor-intensive repairs of the entire process. Iwai got down to his knees and grabbed the plastic bag, thrusting his arm into it and groping around for something other than a razor-sharp edge to grab onto. The most grabbable thing wound up being the generous curve of one of his ass cheeks, but beggars and choosers and what not. He tugged it free of the bag and cast away the plastic to be thrown away later when he froze, both his eyes going wide.

Akira had a fucking cock.

And not a small one either. He stared at it stupidly, blinking over and over while his brain short-circuited. Why in the freshwater fuck was he so anatomically correct? Droids did not _have_ genitalia.

Unless they were built for that specifically.

Fucking hell. Was Akira a sexbot?

He had to be. No one was going to the effort of building hyper-realistic dicks for the aesthetic of it, that was for damn sure. Christ, it even had foreskin. He had a feeling that if he turned it all over, he’d see that his ass was every bit as functional as the rest of it.

“Iwai? What’s wrong?”

He tilted his head back to see Akira peeking at him over the edge of the bed. Sweat broke out across the back of his neck. What was he going to say? _Oh, just wondering if you have a cockpocket up your ass, don’t mind me_? That’d go over well. Shoving his hips to the side and onto the ground, he grasped the edge of his bed and dragged himself up to his feet. “Nothin’. Nothin’, it’s-- I’ll be right back. Stay right there.”

Akira stared at him balefully, both his hands pressed down into the bed and his torso dangling between his arms.

“Er, right. Sorry. Just hang on a sec.”

Iwai rushed out of the bedroom and into Kaoru’s. Never in a million years would he have foreseen himself digging around in his son’s drawer to find a pair of underwear to put on a well-hung android, but there he was. Life had a funny way of stripping away his dignity the instant it determined he’d been able to muster any.

Snatching up the first pair he came across, he slipped back into the room and hunkered down, squatting in front of his discarded pelvis and tugging the briefs over them as quickly as he physically could. “Alright, sorry about that. Here.” He stood up again and slid the hips onto the bed, climbing up after them and rubbing his face. Akira tilted his head slightly and drew his face into an odd expression.

“Did you put those on just now? Why?”

“I--”

Akira lowered himself slowly, leaning back against his seat of pillows and tugging his own hips forward. He slid a finger beneath the elastic band and peeled it back. “Oh.” A pause, and he lifted his head to stare at Iwai like a rabbit frozen before a wolf. “That’s--” He squinted and dropped his head again, peeking down beneath the band. “Are you sure these hips are mine?”

He didn’t mean to, but Iwai snorted loudly and folded his arms. “There weren’t any other detached pelvises lyin’ around in that underpass, I promise you.”

“But I don’t understand.” Snatching his fingers away from the band, Akira grabbed his own wrist and sat back against his pillows. His eyes were still wide and distraught. “Only sex robots have those. I checked on MachiNet.” He titled his head back again and stared at Iwai like he was going to tell him differently any moment now. When he remained silent, Akira reared back as if he’d slapped him. “Am I a sexbot?!”

Iwai had never seen an android look so devastated in his life. It surprised the hell out of him. Hesitantly, he sat down beside him and put an awkward hand between his shoulder blades. “Not necessarily? Reid said you were workin’ at his flower shop as a normal part-timer. He didn’t even know you were an android.”

Still silent, Akira clenched at the bedding beneath his hands, but he soon turned his face up towards Iwai with his eyebrows furrowed. “He didn’t?”

“Nah. He was pretty fuckin’ surprised when I found you in pieces. Like I said before, I can’t say what all you had goin’ on before I brought you here, but...even if you were built for that kinda shit, it doesn’t sound to me like you were handlin’ a buffet of dicks every day.” Eugh, great job. Yeah, that was surely the trick to comfort him. He was so very ill-equipped to try and give anyone a tactful pep talk about anything, but it was out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

He sighed deeply and moved his hand to drop it against the crown of Akira’s dark, curly head. “Listen...even if that is what you were doin’, what’s it matter? There’s nothin’ wrong with that kinda work. What’s got you so down about it?”

“Work?” Akira frowned deeply, but rather than pull away, he leaned into Iwai’s ribs and curled his arms around himself. “Does it really count as ‘work’ if it’s something you’re built to do?” Thank god he didn’t seem to actually expect him to answer. Akira made an artificial sigh and looked away from him, his fingers toying lightly with the hem of his t-shirt. “You’re right. I guess it doesn’t matter. Can we fix my legs now?”

“Yeah. Sure thing, kid. Akira.”

Iwai got comfortable beside him, examining both ends of his hips and inventorying the damage and what all he’d need to pick up from Akihabara. Beside him, Akira was silent, watching dully with his face resting against Iwai’s bicep.

While he worked, it occurred to him that he’d been more on the nose than he realized at the time.

He really did have a beautiful robot sex potato in his bed.

Akira was quiet for the rest of the day. He was still interested in helping with the repairs, but he was much more subdued this time around. Admittedly, it could have just been that he was simply more focused now that Iwai was allowing him the opportunity to be properly hands-on. He’d given Akira his screwdriver and showed him how to uninstall the ball-and-socket joints up inside his hips, and now he was bracing them for him so Akira could concentrate on doing the actual work.

Each screw Akira removed, Iwai bagged up for him and kept to the side. He knew he was going to have to make another trip to go pick up some new parts for this next stint of repairs, but he was worried about leaving the kid to his own devices when he was so out of sorts. Ultimately, he waited for Kaoru to come home from school before he did just that. He made the trip to Akihabara and kept it as short as he possibly could. This time, the little girl behind the counter had hand and forearm augments, and her fingernails changed colors every few seconds.

After dinner with Kaoru, he brought Akira back to the room and taught him how to install the new joints. If it was weird for him to actively repair the damage on his own body, Akira didn’t indicate as much. He worked hard on the installations, his torso steady in Iwai’s arms and resting between his thighs. Like this, they didn’t exactly have the extra set of arms they needed to keep his hips in place, so Iwai sat with his legs spread and used both his feet to stabilize the detached pelvis. It wasn’t exactly ideal, but they were working with what they had.

Despite there being two joints, Akira finished them both in the same amount of time it had taken Iwai to do the one arm. He was magnificently efficient, able to see the screws without the need for magnifying glasses, and he had a talent for fitting the head into each groove on the first try. He also managed not to slip it loose like Iwai often did with such tiny ass screws. He was impressed. They were even able to get his legs attached before Kaoru started shuffling around to get ready for bed.

Akira tilted back against his chest and carefully laid the screwdriver down. “Now what?”

“Now comes the tedious part.” Leaning over Akira’s shoulder, Iwai picked the screwdriver up and used the tip of it to poke at a frayed wire sticking out from the inner edge. “Gonna have to reattach all these and recase ‘em. We can do that tomorrow. I’ll show you what to do. It’s a bit mind numbin’, but it’s real easy. You can watch your dumb helicopter shows while we do it.”

He’d been gloomy all day, but Iwai’s little rib made him laugh for the first time he’d heard since the day before. It made Iwai smile behind him. “Sure. I’d like that.”

“If you want, you can watch one right now. I’m gonna hit the sack myself. Some of us are old men who need their rest.”

It took some effort on his part to climb out from beneath Akira and get him situated on the bed again, but eventually he was able to roll out of it and slouch into the bathroom to get his nightly rituals out of the way. He splashed cold water on his face and brushed his teeth, then changed into a pair of loose grey joggers. Akira was still flipping through channels when he returned to him and flopped down onto the bed to lie on his back.

“What kind of shows do you like, Iwai?”

“Hm?” He opened his eyes and tilted his head back to see Akira gazing down at him with his big, dark eyes. Whoever built him had clearly had a thing for eyelashes. “I’m not real picky. I’ve always liked old westerns. Those are prolly before your time. Hell, they’re before my time too.”

Akira went silent, his eyes faintly narrowed. Iwai stared up at him while he processed this new information and offered a short nod. “Westerns are the ones with cowboys,” he said very matter-of-factly. Chuckling, Iwai nodded for him and folded his arms behind his head.

“That’s right.”

“And horses.”

“Mm. Horses too.” Yawning, he settled into the bed and listened with half an ear as Akira continued to cycle through channels. He caught a few high-pitched lines of some cartoon, an explosion, what sounded to be a bunch of frantic chefs scrambling around a kitchen, and a documentary about the history of subnautic exploration before he landed on the news.

“...oup thought to be responsible for the rise in anti-tech sentiments has been detained in connection to the violent decommissioning of a young gynoid. The group denies any involvement in the spate of recent attacks--”

Iwai snatched the remote from him and abruptly changed the channel. “Not that one.” Fuck’s sake, why were they showing pictures?

Akira was motionless as Iwai struggled to find anything that could possibly work as a palate cleanser after something like that. He remained unblinking, watching the screen until Iwai settled on some harmless cooking show and passed the remote back to him. “...Who were those people? That group the news anchor was talking about.”

Honestly, even Iwai was only vaguely aware of them. Not familiar enough to give an especially satisfying explanation. “Just some nutjobs lookin’ to stir shit up. Don’t worry about them.”

“Oh.”

Several seconds passed them by before Akira spoke again. “The lady said ‘decommissioning’.”

“Yeah. She did.”

He cracked one eye open to see Akira’s face set in a stony expression. It was one part deeply unimpressed, one part tired, and two parts resigned. His arms were pulled into a tight cross against his chest. “She wouldn’t have said that if it was a human girl, would she?”

“No,” Iwai agreed. He exhaled hard and lifted his arm, stretching it up and pressing a palm to Akira’s dark hair. “Don’t let that kinda trash get into your head. Alright? Lotsa people out there who’re gonna question your humanity. Don’t give ‘em the satisfaction of makin’ you question it too.”

Slowly, Akira uncrossed his arms and looked down at him. He seemed unsure for a moment, his lips pushing together before he inclined his head and lay down beside him. “But they’re right, aren’t they? I’m not a human.”

Eugh. He was too tired for a philosophical discussion right now. Iwai pushed the heels of his palms against his eyes and groaned faintly, pulling them away and turning to stare back at him. “So what if you’re not? That ain’t the point. The point is, you and I both know that was bullshit. We don’t say animals get ‘decommissioned’ when we kill ‘em any more than we do humans.”

The pinched look on Akira’s face was endearing. Iwai cocked an eyebrow at him as Akira folded his arm against the bed and propped his head against it. “I’m not an animal either.”

Iwai snorted at him and leaned forward to flick the curl over his nose. “Don’t be a brat. I know what you are. What I mean is, you’re a hell of a lot closer to a human than an animal is, but we still call it what it is when they die. Now go to sleep.”

Akira smiled at him, impish and disconcertingly cute. “I don’t have to sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah. Keep braggin’ about it.” He yanked a pillow out from beneath his head and smacked it over Akira’s face as he grunted in displeasure. “Good night, Akira.”

“...Good night, Iwai,” he said back, peeking up at him from over the edge of the pillow.

Maybe he could think of something more eloquent and meaningful to say to him tomorrow. For now, all he could think about was sleep. Dreams were much less complicated than the real world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **update** : due to a family emergency, I'll be on a hiatus this week. posting will resume 10/26. I deeply appreciate your understanding.


	11. Chapter 11

* * *

Iwai woke to the muted light of dawn bleeding through his eyelids. Arousal smoldered in his gut like low-burning embers, and something that wasn’t his own hand was wrapped around the erection trapped beneath his joggers. Weird. He hadn’t had a partner in ages, and he didn’t remember having gone out last night. But he must have. Bringing strange men and women over to his apartment was another vice he’d kicked when he had Kaoru in the next room over. He had a knack for attracting...enthusiastic ones. Like hell he was going to subject his kid to whatever screamer he’d picked up at the bar.

Those were definitely fingers around him, though. Warm too, gliding up the length of his cock in a smooth stroke and making him groan his pleasure. Fuck, it’d been awhile. He hadn’t even had any quality time with his own hand with Akira in the apartment taking up his bed and most of his attention. It was nice. Probably just a good dream. That would make sense, if he was feeling a little hard up for touch.

His eyelids jumped a few times before they fluttered open, and he stared at the ceiling in a sleepy fog as the hand around him slid lower and squeezed at the base of his erection. He turned his head to see Akira lying right up against him, his hand stuffed down beneath his waistband and still moving with the touch of an inquisitive virgin.

His heart slammed up into his throat. The breath hissed out of him like steam, and he grabbed Akira by the forearm and yanked it up into the air. “The fuck’re you doin’?”

Akira blinked at him in surprise before his face collapsed into an irritated little frown. “You were aroused,” he said, as if this was the most obvious answer in the world and he might be ever so slightly ignorant for having to ask it. Iwai scowled right back at him and tightened his grip on Akira’s slender forearm.

“I-- Okay? What, you never heard of morning wood before?”

“No,” he answered earnestly. Of course he hadn’t. Iwai squeezed his eyes shut and tried to calm his throbbing heart. It was still kicking against the inside of his ribs like a pissed off horse.

“Look it up, then. You got the internet.”

An affected, put-upon sigh rattled out of him, but Akira obeyed, rolling his eyes up towards the ceiling and staring without blinking. When he popped back to awareness, he blinked once and dropped his head down to gaze back at Iwai. “MachiNet didn’t have anything about them.”

“Oh, for fuck’s-- Look it up on a different site, then.”

“You told me not to go on those sites.”

This fucking kid. Iwai glared at him and shoved himself up onto his elbow, Akira’s forearm still caught in his other hand. “Make an exception, then.”

Clearly hesitant, Akira pulled back slightly, but he made no effort to pull his arm free. “...Fine.” This time he closed his eyes, and Iwai could see his eyelids twitch as he rooted around online to find what he was looking for. When he came to again, he offered Iwai a puzzled frown and cocked his head. “I don’t get it. You were still aroused. That’s what that means.”

Ergh. Iwai shook his head at him and pulled him closer by his skinny arm. “It _means_ they go away on their own, and you don’t gotta be shovin’ your hand down anyone’s pants without askin’ first.”

“But you were asleep.”

Iwai would assume he was being a fucking punk if it weren’t for the look on his face. He seemed genuinely perplexed and even a little upset by this reaction he so clearly didn’t expect. “Are you angry because I’m a man?”

“Wha-- Hands are pretty fuckin’ gender neutral, kid. And...no. Told you why. That’s the kinda thing you don’t do to someone ‘less you hashed it out beforehand, you hear me?”

The longer he stared at him, the more Akira demurred, shrinking back from him like Iwai might slap him. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I just wanted to help. And...I thought this was all I was good for.”

Oh, hell. The last of his anger snuffed out in one fell swoop, and he let go of him and rubbed harshly at his sleep-heavy eyes. Akira was gonna wear him right the fuck out. “Alright, first of all, that’s bullshit. You’re ‘good for’ whatever you wanna be good for. Second, you never told me why the idea of it bothers you so much.”

Honestly, even as he said it, he wasn’t so sure himself. It was possible that he was so bent out of shape about it because it wasn’t true. If Akira really had been built for sex, why was he so damn surprised about it? His memory banks got wiped, but if he already had an explicit purpose, that shouldn’t have just vanished into the ether. That kinda shit was built-in. But there really was no other sensible reason for him to have a dick, much less one so...girthy.

Akira was still frowning, as well as kneading at his forearm where Iwai had grabbed him. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought I was built for something more interesting.” Poor thing curled up like a kicked puppy. He stopped looking at Iwai, instead staring into space and rubbing absently at his skin. “You said you didn’t know what I was doing before, so I thought it could be anything. Like, that I was a secret agent, or a spy, or something. I thought I was built to help people, not just...help them have an orgasm.”

He looked so diminished that Iwai felt terrible for him. The last of his arousal fizzled away, and he sat up and ruffled at his dark hair. “Akira, it’s just a dick. If you don’t want to use it on strangers, then don’t. Doesn’t seem like anyone’s makin’ you. If you’d rather help people some other way, then what’s stoppin’ you?”

Staring down at him, Iwai frowned as Akira declined to answer. He let it go on for awhile before he sighed at him and pushed his hand beneath his skinny neck, tugging him up off the bed and sitting him up against the headboard. This kid was fucking unreal. Just last night, he’d watched a news clip about a gynoid dismembered at the hand of some shitty cultists, and here he was devastated that he hadn’t been built to help people out in a way he thought was meaningful. Akira was going to break his heart.

“I’m okay,” Akira murmured. “I’m sorry I touched you without asking.”

“It’s fine.” He sifted his fingers through Akira’s springy curls and forcibly tilted his head back. “Just keep it in mind for next time. No one ever died of blue balls, alright?” Akira blinked and turned his eyes up towards him again.

“What are blue balls?”

“...Nevermind.”

He seemed to be feeling better, so as far as Iwai was concerned, his job was done. Climbing out of bed, he checked his Tab for any alerts he may have missed and sauntered towards the kitchen to get himself fed. He could hear Kaoru puttering around already. The smell of frying bacon made his empty stomach sit up and take notice. “Mornin’.”

“Hey, dad.” Kaoru smiled for him and wriggled the panhandle clutched in his fingers. “You want some bacon?”

“Always.” Like he even needed to ask. The two of them ate breakfast together at the kotatsu, Iwai nursing another mug of overly sweet coffee while Kaoru sucked down some violently green energy drink from a partially-clear can. Today was Sunday. Kaoru usually liked to stay home with him, but apparently some of his school friends wanted to go to some sort of VR event at a nearby arcade. Once their food was gone and the dishes were washed, Iwai charged up his card for him and sent him on his way.

Probably a good thing that Kaoru was going to be out. They had a lot of painful shit to get done today. He headed back into the bedroom and got all his tools laid out so they could get to work, and he could stop thinking about what Akira’s hand had felt like around his cock.

As he’d promised yesterday, Iwai taught Akira how to use the spark pliers and get the wires recased. Really, it had turned out to be a great idea to let Akira help with all this; his fingers were slender and nimble and well-suited to the meticulous work, and he seemed to enjoy doing it. It seemed important to him to make himself useful. Plus, it took his mind off all his weird angst about potentially being a prostibot, which suited Iwai well.

They worked through most of the morning listening to music and keeping the TV off. Iwai let him glue the coolant pipes back together, they got all the shredded wires looking good as new, and he held the detached pelvis steady while Akira popped each of his thighs back up into their respective hip sockets. He wasn’t going to be able to test them until both his halves were put back together, but he was confident in the repair work. Akira had done a spectacular job.

“Think I should make you my apprentice, huh? You’re pretty good at all this.”

Akira offered him a terribly bashful smile in return. His eyelashes flickered down towards his cheek as he balanced himself with one arm and lifted the other to drag his fingertips along the back of his neck. “Thanks. I like working with you. Do you think I’ll be fixed by the end of the day?”

Hmm. Iwai rubbed at his chin and leaned over his pelvis, lifting it up by the hips and taking a long look at the inside. “I’m not sure. It might be better to tackle it tomorrow. You’re not gonna be able to move at all until the repairs are done, and they’re gonna be extensive.”

Since he was learning anyway, he figured a demonstration was in order. He got Akira to pass him his silver prober and used it to root around for the seam hidden beneath his skin. Unlike with his chest, there was no button on his lower half, so he had to pry it open by force to get his abdominal panels to pop apart and glide down into his sides. “See this right here?” Iwai traced the diagonal cut where it had sliced through one of his memory sockets. “It’s gonna be delicate work to get this back in good shape. I might end up having to cut it out and install a whole new socket. Then I’m gonna have to solder your spine back together. Won’t be too difficult to get your coolant piping fixed, but getting the oil tubes done up might. We’ll see. And...all that’s after I get your torso cut clean.”

The reminder made Akira freeze, his eyes cutting back up to Iwai’s face and his hands twisting just above his navel. It was so weird to see him look sick to his stomach when he didn’t have a stomach to be sick to. “...Right.”

Iwai’s mouth curled as he regarded him with as much paternal disapproval as he could muster. It had always worked on Kaoru. He’d once burst into tears the instant Iwai discovered some racy manga he’d accidentally left sticking out of his bag. Akira, however, didn’t seem to notice it at all. “I still think you should let me knock you out,” he finally said, jarring the kid out of his seasick stupor.

“No.” That stark look of dread disappeared in favor of something hard and stubborn, and he met Iwai’s stare with flashing gunmetal eyes. “I’ll be okay.”

“Are you fuckin’ serious? Akira, you were screamin’ like a goddamned chop saw. Are you really gonna make me do that to you again?”

It was the first time he’d seen him hesitate. Akira bit down on his lip and curled one arm around himself to rub at his other bicep. “But...you made it better last time. You could do the same thing, right? Override the pain with something else?”

He probably could. That was true. Iwai considered that more seriously, staring into Akira’s stubborn face and folding his arms. “Maybe,” he conceded. “Emphasis on the fuckin’ _maybe_. Even if I can, there’s no guarantee the neighbors won’t call the cops on my ass for torture. It’s still gonna hurt you until I can replace the sensation with somethin’ else.”

He’d toyed with the idea of giving Akira something to hold that would keep his sensors stimulated, but that wasn’t foolproof either. In this hypothetical situation, with two simultaneous touches warring for Akira’s attention, there was nothing Iwai could do to ensure one would dominate the other. It could even be a straight fifty-fifty shot which sensation actually reached his processor first, leaving him feeling both pleasure and excruciating agony one split second after the other, which did not strike him as any better than the alternative.

“Let me think about it more. Right now, you need to decide if you’re ready to commit to bein’ out of commission for the rest of the day.”

“I am,” came Akira’s immediate response. His face seemed intent as he pushed himself up onto his hands. “I’m bedridden anyway, so it’s not like it’ll be any different.”

Little shit hadn’t even thought about it. He made a decent point, though. Iwai scowled in concession and raked his short fingernails along the back of his skull. “Alright, alright. May as well get your hips cut right now if you’re that sure about it.”

He had to go get the board for that first, plopping it onto the bed and pulling Akira’s bottom half all the way up the bed to lay the edge of his waist over it. His abdominal panels were still open, so Iwai had to slide them closed again before he sat back. “You wanna do it this time?”

“Can I?” Akira reached for the laser saw immediately, picking it up with all the glee of a kid who’d gotten their hands on a lighter for the very first time. It was almost enough he changed his mind and snatched the saw back, but even Iwai couldn’t bring himself to be that heartless. Akira had had a shitty enough time of it without taking his toys away too. “This feels kind of cool.”

“Careful where you wave that thing.” Iwai straddled his bare legs and pressed his hands down over Akira’s hips. “You wanna cut at the same angle. Try not to take off too much. The less of that alloy we need to replace, the better. You’ll wanna shave just enough to get that jagged edge off ‘em.”

Akira bobbed his head and lowered the saw, twisting around to find his goggles and tug them down over his head. “Okay. I can do that.”

“I know you can.” He pulled his own face shield on and motioned for Akira to go ahead and flip the switch. The intense buzzing noise was loud enough it almost drowned out the music still filtering from his Tab. Akira leaned forward, matching the angle of the cut and placing it against the edge. “Does that look good?”

“Yeah. Go for it.” Iwai pushed down with both hands, keeping the lower half of Akira’s body still so he could bring the laser down through it. The bottoms of the prongs hit the board, and Akira switched the saw off and pulled it away to inspect his work. He seemed surprised by how easy that had been.

Damn, he definitely did good. He’d gotten an even closer cut than Iwai had with his arm. Android eyes were really something else. If he was dead set on not being a sexbot, he could easily make a career for himself as a robot nursemaid. Iwai took the saw from him and ruffled Akira’s dark hair with a smile. “You did real good. Proud of you. But...now we gotta do the other side.”

“Oh.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Akira staring at the bed and Iwai staring at Akira. Maybe there was some unexpectedly simple solution he was overlooking. Maybe someone else would have a better idea of what to do to get the kid through this unscathed. “I’ll be right back. Gimme just a minute.” He grabbed his Tab and stood up from the bed, retreating out to his balcony and jabbing his fingers against the screen to find Yamato in his contact list.

Unlike every other normal person on earth, Yamato had no music that played while their Tabs connected, so all he heard was unsettling silence until he finally answered. The screen stayed dark, however. Yamato had always been weird about video calls.

“How’s your pet project going, Uncle?”

“Eugh, don’t call him that.” Iwai dropped down to a grumpy sit in one of the two small chairs crammed onto the narrow balcony, lifting his legs up and resting his ankles against the rail. “Lemme ask you somethin’. What happens when an android shuts down?”

There was a long pause before Yamato hummed back at him in bemusement. He could picture the suspicious look on his face as clear as day. “Is this a trick question? What do you mean, ‘what happens’? They shut down, Iwai.”

“They don’t stay conscious or nothin’? Not even a little bit?”

“What? No. Of course not. Did someone tell you they did?” He sounded irritated now, like he was offended someone might be going off spreading ludicrous falsehoods just to spite him.

“No. Nothin’ like that. Akira refuses to let me shut him down, but I’m tryin’ to fix his fucked up middle. Need to take a laser saw to the edges. He just about shoved his hand into it when I did the same to his arm, but he’d still bein’ a stubborn little shit about it.”

“...Why?” A noise that sounded like a disbelieving scoff burst through the speaker, along with a squeak that sounded like he was leaning back in his chair. “That’s asinine. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. I would just shut him down anyway, if I were you.”

That would be the easiest answer, wouldn’t it? Iwai rolled his eyes and dug a fresh sucker out of his pocket to stick between his teeth. “Yeah, well, you’re not me, and I’m not gonna do him like that. So do you have any suggestions that aren’t to forcibly turn off his brain? He’s down to one tactile processor, so I thought about tryin’ to...I dunno, mask it with somethin’ else.”

“Oh?” Yamato fell silent again, his chair rocking faintly while he mulled the question over. “That does make it more manageable. Well, if you refuse to do the most obvious thing, then I don’t see why you wouldn’t just unplug the remaining processor. He can’t register pain if he can’t feel anything at all.”

The sucker clicked against the backs of his teeth. It was a watermelon one this time. Not as good as the peach ones, but he’d take it. “I’m not gonna fuck with the tactile processors. I would if it was as easy as just unpluggin’ it, but those are hard wired and real delicate. If I screw it up, I may not be able to fix it at all. I can’t even fill in the gaps in the sensor mesh.”

“This is an awful lot of heartache for something that has such an elegant and simple solution.”

“I ain’t shuttin’ him down, Yamato.”

“So you’ve said.” Iwai may not have been able to see him, but he could feel in his bones that Yamato was rolling his eyes. “You said you’re...what, trimming the end off his middle? You _might_ be able to keep the sensors up above it overstimulated. The sensations have to travel up from where you’re making the cut up to his processor. If you can keep him overloaded with something that keeps his processor occupied before any of the impulses from the bottom can reach it, then he should be fine. As for what that is, I can hardly tell you. Giving him something to hold will be useless, it would take even longer to travel up his arm. The closer you can get to his head, the better. That’s the best advice I can offer you.”

Iwai closed his eyes and tilted his head back. It was nice out today. The sky was getting to be overcast again, but it was a soft, pale grey, and the breeze was cool and carried with it the subtle smell of rain. “Yeah. I appreciate it. Thanks for your time.”

“Good luck. I hope for your sake that if this doesn’t work, your neighbors are exceptionally understanding people.”

They disconnected after that.

He lingered outside for a moment, fantasizing about all the times he used to sit out on his balcony and smoke before he had a baby he was invested in not killing. It had been many, many years since the last time he had a cigarette, but the cravings never truly left him.

Iwai stayed out there until he finished his sucker and lumbered inside to throw it away, then rejoined Akira in the bedroom. At least he had some idea what to do now.

Time to put together a game plan.


	12. Chapter 12

* * *

Akira accepted the dremel from him and turned it over in his hand, looking over it with open curiosity. “What’s this?” he asked. Then he paused and squinted at it for a few seconds before he looked back up at him. “Nevermind. I looked it up. What’s it for?”

“Right now? Hopefully, it’ll make for the oddest anesthesia I ever heard of. No guarantee it’ll work, but this is the best solution I’ve got.” Iwai eased down onto the bed beside him and pressed Akira’s thumb against the switch. It began to vibrate noisily in his palm. “Our theory is that if we can keep your sensors overstimulated with this, the pain from the saw won’t be able to reach your processor. It’s gonna be kinda awkward, but it’s the best I can do.”

“Awkward?” Akira flipped the dremel back off and peered up at him, blinking owlishly. “Why?”

“‘Cause it’s gotta be as close to your head as I can get it. Might have to just lay it on your chest, or on your back, dependin’ on how you prefer to go about it.”

“Oh. Hm.” He flipped them dremel over his fingers, twirling it with ease and furrowing his brows. “I see what you mean, but it’s not that awkward. It’s not like you’re going to shove it in my--”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, or I’ll kick your ass.” Iwai glowered at him, plucking the dremel right out of his fingers and jabbing it under his nose. “Doesn’t even make sense.”

Akira crossed his eyes to stare at the sander pointed at him before he looked back at Iwai and scoffed. “...I was going to say mouth. What did _you_ think I was going to say?”

Urgh. Punk ass. He stiffened uncomfortably for a few seconds, utterly unwilling to admit just how far down into the gutter his mind had just gone spelunking. Then he squinted and used his free hand to grab Akira’s jaw and dig his thumbs into it, pried it open, and eyed the inside of it. “You got sensors in your mouth? Huh. Maybe I should take that as a suggestion and go with it. Can’t get much closer to your head than that. Then you can’t fuckin’ sass me either.” Two birds, one improvised, extremely inadvisable vibrator. He liked it.

His upcoming patient seemed to like it a great deal less than Iwai did, however. Akira pushed Iwai’s hand out of his face and frowned colorfully. “Of course there are sensors in my mouth. And no, you’re not putting a power tool in it.”

Iwai folded his arms, though he still fiddled with the dremel, rolling it between his fingers with all the nervous energy he was trying so hard to stamp down. Akira was lucky he was such a goddamned sucker, and that he was the one doing his repairs over someone like Yamato. “Alright, alright. Your mouth is out. On a more serious note, what do you think? Are you willing to give it a shot?”

“There’s not really a better alternative, is there? It’s fine. I trust you.” Akira lay on his back, inching down the pillows and then turning over onto his stomach. Privately, Iwai was glad for that. He’d look less like some virgin sacrifice down on his belly than he would facing the ceiling with a blindfold over his eyes and a fucking laser saw angled over his middle.

When Akira was comfortable, he laid the dremel down and moved to his knees behind him. First thing he needed to do was to get all the damn coolant tubes and frayed wires up out of the way. If he accidentally sliced through those, he was fucked, and so was his new mattress. It took a lot of finessing to get them up inside his ribs without getting everything tangled, but Iwai managed somehow. Second thing was to pick up a pair of tweezers and grip them between his thumb and forefinger. “Might feel a little weird for a sec, so brace yourself. I’ll be as careful as I can.”

“Huh? With what?”

He declined to answer. With the utmost care, Iwai pinched at the frayed edge of his dermis and slowly began to peel it up from the sensor mesh with a wet little noise. Sounded like he was pulling tape. Akira jumped a bit beneath him, but once that initial nick with the tweezers was over, he relaxed and stared at the wall with a furrowed brow. “You were right, that did feel weird. What are you doing?”

“Preservin’ as much of your skin as I can. ...Dermaset is expensive, kid.”

What Iwai lacked in grace, he made up for with patience. Without any tearing whatsoever, he rolled it up a good few inches and exposed the mesh beneath it, a microscopic honeycomb of hexagonal tactile sensors that gleamed beneath his bedroom light. Maybe if Reid was happy enough with the job he’d done, he’d let Iwai get his hands on some replacements and take the time to fill in the gaps left over in all the places he’d had to cut and solder him back together. In his current state, Akira wasn’t going to be able to feel any touches to his waist or the spot just above his elbow. Not life threatening, by any means, but definitely not ideal.

For several seconds, he peered down at the mesh and dragged his fingernails against his own stubble with a faint rasp. “Hey. Got an idea. I’m gonna try something.”

It might not end well, but he owed it to Akira to do everything in his power to make sure he could do this without putting him through hell a second time. Gingerly, he brought his hand down to hover over Akira’s back, and he let the very tips of his fingers skim across the mesh. Akira jumped beneath him. Hard. His pretty hands clenched at the bedding beneath him, but the noise he made was a gasp of surprise rather than an outcry of pain. Iwai lifted his head and did it again, grazing the pads of his fingers featherlight over his body while he watched Akira’s face. “You okay? How’s it feel?”

“It’s...it feels good.” Just saying that made Akira’s pale cheeks color a bit. It was charming that he could swing blushing without any blood. For not the first time, Iwai was intensely grateful he hadn’t sustained any damage to his face. Not only would it have been too delicate to fix, it would also have been a goddamned crime.

Akira shuffled on the bed a bit and peeked back at him from over his shoulder. “It feels like a lot. It’s really intense.”

“Heh, no surprise there. No more skin to dampen the feelin’.” He smiled to himself and kept it up as he brought his other hand down to the edge of his torso. “Alright, I’m gonna keep doin’ this and then touch you in a second spot. Want you to tell me if you feel any pain, or if you even feel anything in that second spot at all, got it?”

“Okay.”

The memory of Akira collapsing onto the bed that first time he’d pinched a nerve was still fresh on his mind. His molars ground together, and he swirled his fingertips in circles against the mesh at the same time the other hand caught one of the loose sensors and pressed down hard enough that it would hurt -- assuming he could actually register it. “You feel that?” The shake of Akira’s head eased the cold knot his insides had tied themselves into. He blew out hard and sat back a little further, letting go of the hanging sensor. “Good. Perfect. I think our plan is gonna work out just fine.”

He kept up his attention, tracing random shapes in Akira’s back and using his free hand to grab his face shield and the saw. “I’m trustin’ you to keep your eyes shut, got it? Unless you want me to have to replace them too.”

“Maybe I do want you to replace them.”

“You don’t.”

Akira only made a noise of acknowledgement and pushed his face down into the pillow beneath him. Must be nice to not have to breathe. Unless you had all your limbs yanked off first, in which case it probably didn’t feel like any particular benefit. “Wait.” He turned his head again and squished his cheek down, watching Iwai from the corner of his eyes. “What color are they? My eyes.”

Oh. He didn’t know. Iwai paused there, his hand going still against him. It hadn’t occurred to him that Akira wouldn’t have a clue what his own face looked like. “...Grey.”

“Like yours?”

“Nah. Yours are real dark. Almost black.”

Despite the angle, he could still see the faint wrinkle to Akira’s nose. “What, really? That’s so boring. Now I do want you to replace them. You should give me some red ones.”

“Fuck no.” He shook his head and leaned forward, meeting Akira’s striking, non-boring grey eyes. “I like ‘em the way they are. They kinda remind me of gunmetal. They look nice.”

“Oh. Well…if you think so, then okay.” It was a surprisingly easy concession from someone who was usually so damned bullheaded. Iwai nodded his approval and hunkered down.

“Good. Alright, I’m gonna count to seven again--”

“Again,” Akira muttered, rolling his head further away from the pillow and squinting over his shoulder. “You didn’t count to seven in the first place.”

Well. Akira had him there. He chuckled smoothly and patted him up between his shoulder blades. “Not gonna let me use the same trick twice, eh? Alright. No counting at all, then. How ‘bout that?” He smirked at the back of Akira’s head and dropped his hand down to his side instead to squeeze it.

The moan that erupted from him went straight down to his stomach where it sizzled like a still burning coal. Akira actually shuddered beneath him, his face shoved down and hidden by his pillow while his fingers clawed into the folds of Iwai’s black comforter.

God damn. What in the world was that?

Hesitating for only a moment, and forcing his painfully wide eyes to blink, Iwai did it again, settling his work-rough fingers around Akira’s side and squeezing gently. He sounded electrified by pleasure. Iwai dragged his thumb against his back and curled his hand, pressing his fingertips upward and lighting him up like the sky over a new year. Hell, maybe he wouldn’t need the dremel at all.

He fumbled for the saw with one hand and dropped his head, and all the while, he never stopped touching Akira. The kid was a mess beneath him. He could hear his moans even muffled as they were through the pillow. As he raked his fingers along Akira’s side, he lined up the saw with his edge and turned it on. The heavy drone of the laser didn’t seem to rattle him at all, like he was completely deaf to it.

It was more of a challenge than he’d have liked to keep it up while also lining up the laser just right. The absolute last thing he wanted was to have to make a second cut, though...Akira didn’t seem like he was in a position to complain about it if he did. 

Shit. He needed him more stable than this. Iwai chewed at the inside of his cheek before he let go of his side and planted his palm flat against his back. With Akira as still as he was going to get him, he brought the saw down in a smooth arc.

The noise Akira made was inhuman. An incomprehensible cacophony of every sound he was capable of making seemed to escape him all at once until it stopped abruptly. Akira went slack on his bed, as limp as a puppet someone had lost their grip on. Iwai was quick to shut the saw down and shove his face shield up. “...Akira?”

He wasn’t moving at all. Iwai sucked in between his teeth and tossed both the saw and the loose ring of metal he’d just sliced off him. “Akira?” Turning him over onto his back, he reached for his face and patted at his cheek with one hand. A few seconds later, Akira jolted to life beneath him, his eyes fluttering open and surprise stamped on his pretty face. “Are you...okay?”

“Yeah. I think so.” Akira blinked several more times, looking almost dazed as he lifted his head up. “What just happened?”

There wasn’t a polite way to say, ‘I accidentally made you come so hard your brain short-circuited to the point it needed an emergency reboot to be functional again.’ So instead, Iwai muttered, “Dunno. Huh. Weird,” and leaned back away from him, yanking the face shield off entirely and dropping it onto the bed. “Let me, uh, roll your skin back down.”

“Huh? Is it done?”

“Yep. It’s done.”

And thank god, or the universe, or the spirits, or whatever the fuck he was meant to thank in these moments, because he wasn’t sure he could handle hearing Akira moan like that again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **edit** : I apologize for the late notice, but I'll be taking one more hiatus over the next week. Posting will resume **11-16-2020**.


	13. Chapter 13

* * *

It took Iwai the whole rest of the day just to get the new alloy molded into shape. Fixing his arm had been pretty straightforward. Even cut at the angle it was, it still only required a simple circular shape in one smooth strip. Easy enough. His trunk, on the other hand, was a whole different beast. All four of the panels on his front and back required individual pieces so they could still retract or extend as needed, not to mention the separate ones he had to make for the sides that stayed static. It was a long evening of cutting, melting, shaping, and smoothing to get them all the exact right specs, but by some miracle, he got it done before midnight.

For the next couple of nights, he crashed right beside Akira, falling asleep to the sounds of him watching TV. And each morning, he woke up beside him and rolled out of bed to shove some food into his mouth and get back to work on his repairs. He was glad Akira had convinced him to start tackling them when he did; it took longer than he’d estimated to get his middle functional again. In between soldering his spine back together, cutting out the fucked up bank socket and installing a new one, reattaching his tubing without getting oil and coolant all over the place, and wiring him back up, he barely had enough time to eat and sleep.

Akira handled it all like a champ, though. He was so bright and inquisitive that Iwai had been certain he’d grow bored at any second, but he seemed perfectly content with his company. He asked about all the music Iwai listened to while he worked, was adorably attentive as he waxed poetic about the raging crush he used to harbor for the vocalist of Show-Ya, and occasionally read aloud some of the e-books he’d downloaded for himself when he was interested in reading but still wanted to include Iwai.

For all that Akira was a cheeky brat, he was also disconcertingly sweet -- when he was of a mind to be. On at least one night, he lay there in the bed and kept his head turned so he could help Kaoru out with his homework while Iwai repaired his wires.

He was really going to miss him when he inevitably had to surrender the kid back to Reid and the life he had before it’d fallen to literal pieces. Ugh, he was getting so soft in his old age. Disgraceful.

The third morning found him kneeling on the bed, a paintbrush clutched in his hand and an open bottle of Dermaset in Akira’s. Both his arm and his back were already re-coated, which left only his middle in need of some fresh skin. He painted a thin line of peach across the narrow strip of silver just beneath his navel, building up a thick layer of it with careful brushstrokes. It was surreal to think that this was the very last of his repairs. They’d finally reached the home stretch. Iwai tilted and swept the brush down across his side, covering the last bit of his exposed exoskeleton.

Akira watched the whole time, his head slightly lifted and his eyelids unusually heavy. Iwai glanced up to meet his gaze. “What’s wrong?”

“Watching you do that makes me sleepy.”

“Is that right? Thought you didn’t need to sleep.” Iwai set the brush down on the towel by his knee and took the bottle of Dermaset from him to screw the lid back on. Leaning forward, he pursed his lips and blew across the wet skin.

“I don’t. It just makes me feel like I should.”

It always took a bit to dry, but it seemed to stretch out longer when he was impatient to get Akira up on his feet. Akira was handling it with more restraint than he was, and he’d been the one bedridden for more than a whole fucking week. He held himself still and watched as Iwai took up the syringe and injected fresh lubricant beneath his skin.

“Alright. I think we’re in business.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Here.” Iwai slid off the bed first and outstretched both his hands, grasping at Akira’s own and helping him to sit. Really sit. On his ass and everything, for the very first time since Iwai had rescued him. Akira seemed to appreciate the novelty too. He planted both his feet on the floor and gave a few experimental bounces, still clutching at Iwai’s hands and smiling like a dork. “Nice not having to worry about sitting on all your tubes, isn’t it? You ready to try standin'?”

“Yes,” he said, not an ounce of hesitation weighing on his voice. He kept hold of Iwai’s hands and pulled himself onto his feet, coming up to a stand before him and peering down in between them. He didn’t so much as wobble. Slowly, he let go of Iwai’s fingers and took a small step forward. Iwai held his breath the whole time, watching him take another one closer until Akira was right in his space.

Happiness blossomed across Akira’s pretty face. He jerked his head back, meeting Iwai’s gaze for only a fleeting moment before he threw himself at him. The sudden weight made him stagger backwards hard enough he almost bumped into the wall behind him, but Iwai nevertheless put his arms around him as the kid hugged so fiercely at his neck. “Thank you, Iwai.”

He dropped a hand to Akira’s curls and mussed them fondly. “You’re welcome. How’s it all feel? Nothin’ seems off or anything? You look nice and stable to me, but...”

“Yes. I feel great.”

“Hm.” Iwai frowned a little critically and stepped back away from him, reaching for his hands and turning them both over. “I’m real glad to hear that, but I’d still feel better if we did a few tests.”

Fortunately for Iwai and the sake of his peace of mind, Akira seemed more than happy to accommodate him. He stood still and watched curiously as Iwai got down to his knees, passing his blunt fingers all along the fronts of his calves and down to his feet. “We’re gonna run through a few baselines together, just to make sure all your processors are workin’ like they should be. First thing I wanna test is your mechanosensors. Close your eyes for me?”

Akira did. He held still as Iwai continued to poke at his legs, tilting his head back and curling his fingers around to touch the back of his calf. “Can you tell me where my hand is without lookin’?”

“My left calf.”

He drew his hand away and used the other to touch the top of his opposite foot. “And now?”

Akira correctly identified each touch, rattling off the locations as Iwai moved from his foot, to his ankle, to his thigh, then up to his sides and back. He was also perfectly capable of distinguishing between pressures, as well as different textures when Iwai experimented with the various types of gloves he owned. He could even tell when Iwai tried touching him through the thick material of his comforter.

They tested his proprioceptor next. With his eyes still closed, Akira could touch a finger to the tip of his nose, stay balanced on one foot, and reach behind him to grab the other. Everything really did seem to be in good working order. He could see. He could hear. He could smell. He could speak (oh, could he fucking ever). Akira was well and truly recovered -- save for the narrow, sensationless void in his tactile mesh.

Which was also the last thing he needed to examine. Iwai coaxed both his skinny arms up and peeled the mech t-shirt up over Akira’s head, casting it onto the bed. “Last one, then I’ll take you to Yamato’s place. Just wanna make sure there aren’t any gaps in your mesh that I don’t already know about. And maybe we can get Reid to let me fix those later on.”

“Okay. Do my eyes have to stay closed for this part too?”

Iwai chuckled to himself and shook his head, crouching down to his knees again and patting at his calf. “Not unless you just want to. Alright, I’m gonna pass my hands over you, and they’re gonna stay on you the whole time. I want you to tell me the instant you don’t feel anything anymore, okay?”

“Got it.”

Ever the curious android, Akira peered down at him with his big grey eyes and watched Iwai do as he’d said. His fingertips settled against Akira’s skin, and, one leg at a time, he dragged them from the top of his foot up to his thigh where his borrowed boxers preserved the last of his modesty. All throughout, Akira stayed silent, so he pressed on. His test was as thorough as he promised it would be. Iwai mapped out every inch of his legs, shifting around to his back side and climbing unsteadily to his feet to do the rest of him. From there, he circled his thumb and forefinger around Akira’s right arm, pushing downward to check his smooth shoulder and the curves of his bicep, then his forearm, down to his hand, and around each of his fingers.

Still, Akira said nothing. Glancing down at the back of his head, Iwai shifted to the other arm and repeated the process. As his fingertips skated down towards the inside of his elbow, Akira stiffened and reached around to still his hand. “I can’t feel anything right there,” he said, holding two of his fingertips against the seam Iwai had painted over.

“Okay. That’s fine. We expected that. Lemme see how big it is.” He used his knuckle to measure just how wide the surface area of his numbness was. It wasn’t too much larger than the ring of new alloy, which meant he hadn’t sustained any damage to the cluster fibers. Good. That was the best case scenario, really.

He kept going, pushing down to finish out the lower half of his arm and his left hand. As tactless as it felt to call anything about Akira’s situation ‘lucky’, he was very fortunate that he he'd made it out with as little to fix as he did. Tactile meshes were delicate things. Had his attackers been any more thorough, he might well have lost sensation in his entire forearm.

As he reached up to slide his hand around the side of Akira’s neck, he made a soft noise and curled both his arms around his middle. “I- Iwai…”

His hand froze immediately. “What? Somethin’ wrong with your neck?”

“No, nevermind. It’s nothing.” A furtive glance over his shoulder, and Akira let go of himself and rubbed at his forearm. “I can feel your hand there just fine.”

“Good. Just don’t be scared to say anything if you feel like it’s not right.”

Iwai pushed his hand further, his thumb folding around the back of Akira’s ear. Gently, he switched hands to do the same to the other side before his palms glided down the pale expanse of his back. “Ah-” A second time, he found Iwai’s hand with his own and held it in place. “Right there too. Where I was bisected.”

He paused at his middle, his thumb rubbing circles around the second hidden seam. “Right. Okay, gonna measure this one too.” With Akira’s guidance, he found that he wasn’t able to feel anything above or below the seam a good few centimeters, and right up around the right side of his ribs was a large numb spot where one of the cluster fibers had failed. “Fuck,” Iwai muttered. “We really need to get that patched, I don’t want you runnin’ around not able to feel it if you take an injury to the ribs. I’ll talk to Reid about that when we see him next.”

Akira said nothing. He merely nodded at him, both his hands clenched shut against the fronts of his thighs. Iwai frowned slightly and lowered to his knees again to finish mapping out the skin of his lower back. “You sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

He sighed, but Iwai nevertheless forged full steam ahead, letting his thumb graze just above the elastic waistband of his boxers. Ideally, he’d be able to test literally every inch of his skin to make sure his entire mesh was working, but he wasn’t about to press the issue with him. He trusted Akira to tell him so if he noticed that his ass was numb. Or...other things. Instead, he found the bottom of his spine and followed the curve upward, pushing his whole palm flat against him until both sides were tested.

“Back looks good.” Groaning, Iwai pushed up from the floor again and stepped around to his front when Akira balked and shoved both his arms downward.

“No, don’t-”

He’d tried to cover himself too late. Iwai fell still immediately, his eyes darting down and opening wide. The front of his boxers was tented behind his arms where he tried to hide it, and his face and shoulders were flushed a faint pink as he looked away in discomfort. “It’s- I’m sorry, I-”

“Don’t apologize. Ain’t your fault.” Nothing more human than getting an unwanted boner, really. He’d be amused as hell if Akira didn’t look so embarrassed and squirmy over it. “Akira, it’s fine. Bathroom’s right there if you wanna go, y’know, take care of business.”

Akira burned all the harder, his head snapping upwards and his fingers closing tightly around his wrist. “I don’t...think I can.”

“What?” he blurted stupidly. “Why not?” How the hell did he figure that? They’d just spent the last several minutes establishing that he could move both his arms, hands, and all ten fingers without issue, so it could hardly be a lack of mobility stopping him from jerking off if he really needed to. His suspicions were confirmed as Akira dropped his head, staring down between his toes and gripping at his thin wrist with white knuckles.

“Uhm, I looked on MachiNet. It said that arousal in sex androids has to be triggered intentionally, so it doesn’t go away until the person...wants it to.”

This time it was Iwai’s turn to balk, and he tilted away from him and shoved his cap backwards. Oh, fucking hell. If that was true, Iwai was going to feel like such a creep. He had no idea if it was or not; the closest brush he’d ever had with a sexbot was when he’d driven a superior to the hospital after one of them had malfunctioned and bit his tool clean off. They’d reattached it well enough, but the experience was still a good motivator to ensure Iwai stuck with the kind of partners that didn’t have the same bite force as a crocodile.

But he trusted Akira to know what he was talking about. And it did make a certain amount of deeply uncomfortable sense. “Akira, I promise you that’s not what I was tryin’ to do.”

“No, I know. It’ll go away eventually. I think.”

Iwai paused. “You think? How long?”

“...A few hours.”

Fuck. He blew out a long, heavy breath and dragged his fingers through the shorn strands of his grey hair and stared back at him. “Alright,” he said. “C’mere.” Without awaiting a response, Iwai took him by the waist and sat down hard at the edge of his bed, pulling Akira down into his lap with a bounce and a tiny noise of surprise.

“Iwai?! But-”

He could feel him jump between his thighs when he slid his thumb beneath the waistband and began to peel the boxers down his legs. It really was uncanny how much like an organic partner he was. Felt weird as hell to admire the physics of a cock jumping up from beneath a pair of underwear, but he couldn’t help himself. Akira was so remarkably human. Had he not spent the last week with his hands buried all up in his insides, he might be as surprised as Reid had been to learn otherwise.

Nudging his chin over one of Akira’s silky shoulders, he kept working the boxers down his legs to get him bared. “Lemme help you. Unless you don’t want me to.”

His hand fell still against Akira’s bare side. For a moment, Akira didn’t respond beyond to flex his fingers against Iwai’s thighs. Then he nodded once, curling his arms back and clutching at both his biceps. “Please,” he whispered. His voice was so soft and plaintive that Iwai couldn’t have denied him even if he wanted to.

After a brief squeeze at his side, he drew his hand away and slid it downward, wrapping tightly around his cock instead.

It felt almost exactly like handling a human one. He was hot and had a similar texture to real skin, and from over his shoulder, he could even see that there was a flush to it that hadn’t been there before. God damn, there was even a subtle vein winding along the side of his shaft. Fascinated, Iwai dragged the pad of his thumb along it, following it until it ended a little below the head. The main difference seemed to be that he could feel the faint rush of liquid from inside it...whatever the hell it was.

If he’d thought he was eating up Akira’s reactions before, it was nothing like now. There were no muscles to twitch or spasm, but he did spread his pretty, white legs wide, angling his hips up in a silent plea for more. Or. Technically silent. From his mouth spilled all manner of lascivious noises, from moans, to artificial sighs, to what sounded like low murmurs of Iwai’s name.

Pressing his own mouth to the smooth nexus of Akira’s neck and shoulder, he tightened his grip and began to pump his hand, the fingers of his other following the curve of the inside of his thigh. Fuck, he was so damn soft everywhere. Akira had no hair whatsoever below the neck, so every place he touched felt warm and velveteen, like newly shaved skin fresh from the shower.

His own arousal started to make itself known, digging into the curve of Akira’s ass. Iwai ignored it, however, much too focused on him to pay it any mind. He couldn’t remember the last time he had such a squirming little mess in his lap. Maybe Akira was a sexbot, but he was so virginal that it was endearing as hell.

Something slick and hot spilled over his fingers, and his eyes cut upward to see a thick, semi-translucent liquid dripping down them from the tip. Oh wow. They even gave him precum. That’d explain what he felt in the ‘vein’. It was impossible not to be both intrigued and turned on by him in equal measure. Akira was so exquisitely beautiful, with a body more delicate, precise, and dizzyingly complex than any gun he’d ever gotten his hands on. Despite how thrilled he’d been to help him to his feet only moments before, a hollow pang of regret reverberated in his chest that he had no more opportunity to admire all the flawlessly constructed machinery that made up the most magnetic man he’d ever met.

Iwai kept at it, pulling his hand in smooth strokes while the other dipped down to drag work-rough fingertips against the inside of his thigh. By now, it sounded like Akira actually was breathing, greedy little inhales piercing the air as he clutched at Iwai’s biceps, holding onto him as if he might shake apart again at any second. It took him entirely too long to notice that it was because he was.

Akira came with a moan that made his own cock twitch against his backside, hips lifting with a jerk and his orgasm spilling out of him and onto the floor. As he crumpled against him, Iwai let go of his cock and draped a hand against his chest instead, rubbing lightly while the poor thing sucked in cooler air. He’d actually overheated.

His curly head tilted backwards against one of Iwai’s shoulders. For almost a full minute, he did little more than rub at his heaving chest and mourn that androids couldn’t sweat. Iwai had always thought of it as visual proof of a job well done. Still, Akira was as demolished as he’d ever seen him. He’d take it.

When his chest finally went still again, Iwai tilted his head and patted at his sternum. “Are you-”

His sentence stopped there, his mouth too caught up in Akira’s to finish forming words. Iwai dropped onto his back like a stone, his amorous android splayed out on top of him with both hands framing his face and the bed groaning beneath them.

There was no question that Akira was stronger than him, but with that blocker installed, there wasn’t much he could have done if Iwai had really wanted him to stop. He could almost certainly have yanked him by the hair to get him off. He could have shoved him away or just told him to knock it off, and he was sure that Akira would have.

Iwai did not do any of that.

Instead, he snaked one arm around his middle, slid his fingers into Akira’s silky curls, and kissed him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate everyone's patience, these last few weeks have been really killer. Thank you for sticking with me!


	14. Chapter 14

* * *

Shibuya always looked a little off during the daylight hours. Under the harsh gaze of the sun, all the holographic ads were as dim as the screen of a dying Tab, and it made the whole rest of the world seem so muted for it. Akira didn’t look too fussed about it, though. His eyes were bright and inquisitive as he took stock of his surroundings, one hand tucked up inside Iwai’s sleeve to clutch at his wrist.

For as excited as he was to be outside, Iwai could tell that the other people shuffling up and down the sidewalks made him nervous. A prudent response, in Iwai’s opinion. For all he knew, there was danger lurking around every corner. No matter how interested he was in his first venture outside Iwai’s small apartment, Akira was very intent to stay close to him while they navigated the streets towards Yamato’s building.

Truth be told, Iwai was nervous too. It was stupid -- he knew damn well there was very little reason to be. No one with any amount of sense would be looking to jump an android in broad daylight, where every single person in the vicinity was strapped with a mini camera. To say nothing of the fact that this place had been swarming with cops for the last few weeks, ever since that prick Kaneshiro got busted by some sort of vigilante and started narcing on anyone who had ever so much as glanced at a bag of weed. Besides, no one gave any indication whatsoever that they recognized Akira for what he was.

And why should they? He passed for one of them so effortlessly it was almost unsettling, especially in the new outfit Iwai had bought for him. Well. Sort of bought for him. He’d had a little bit of cash left over from the first stack Reid had given him, so if anyone wanted to get technical about it, the other man had been the one to buy it. Either way, Iwai figured it was a perfectly justified expense if Reid didn’t want him delivering his charge as naked as a baby bird. The cops would probably take exception to that too...considering.

Not looking to get either of them arrested, Iwai had pilfered more of Kaoru’s clothes and taken him out shopping earlier that morning. Akira had surprised him by shying away from denim, explaining that the texture was overwhelming to the point of distraction. He’d gone with something smoother and lightweight instead. Cotton or ‘twill’ or some other shit. Iwai didn’t know, he wasn’t exactly a textile aficionado and hadn’t worn anything fancier than jeans since he went to Kaoru’s elementary school graduation ceremony. He was more than happy to defer to the little shop girl and her expertise. Akira had a grand old time shopping, and with the clerk’s help, he picked out a soft white t-shirt and a black blazer to go with whatever his pants were while Iwai watched from his vantage at the wall and tried to decide if it was weirder to feel like a sugar daddy, or like some other sugar daddy’s middleman.

He still hadn’t decided by the time Akira finished, emerging from the dressing room and rubbing bashfully at his neck. He looked real nice.

“Iwai?”

Iwai blinked and snapped to attention, lifting his head to see that they’d stopped at the edge of the small crowd of pedestrians right in front of a busy intersection. Beside him, Akira tilted his head to glance up at his face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry ‘bout that. Just zoned out for a bit.”

Nodding, he let go of Iwai’s wrist and adjusted the lapels of his new blazer. “You said the guy we’re going to see is your nephew?”

His hands now free, Iwai stuffed one into his coat pocket to produce a fresh sucker. He peeled the wrapper off, shoved it into his mouth, and wedged it against his cheek. “That’s right. Try not to take it too personally if he’s rude to you, alright? He’s got all the people skills of a mean little akita, but he’s smart as hell. He thinks it’ll be real easy to get your memories synced up and you back to normal.” He declined to tack on that Yamato was also the only person he trusted to do right by Akira. Yamato might’ve been kind of a shithead about Akira’s bullheaded refusal to be powered down, but he was a better person than he cared to let on, and he trusted Yamato not to hurt him. “...Guess I can’t be too critical of him. I certainly didn’t do him any favors in the ‘interpersonal’ department.”

The light finally changed over, beckoning them across, and Iwai slid his hand over to touch the small of Akira’s back. “See that building right up there? That’s where he lives. Got himself set up in some fancy pants penthouse or some shit.”

Scrunching his nose, Akira followed Iwai’s pointed finger and then opened his dark eyes wider. “Oh, wow. Like those rich people on TV.”

“You got it.”

The rest of the trip was short lived. He opened up one of the big glass doors for Akira to step through first, then followed behind him right as the poor kid set all the tech sensors off. At least the guards were nice enough about it. They waved them both through without incident when they could see that Akira clearly wasn’t smuggling any weaponry in his limbs.

He looked relieved when they made it safely to the elevator. Iwai sympathized. That was how he felt the majority of the time he came to this stupid fucking building. “You okay?” he asked, reaching over to ruffle Akira’s hair.

“I’m fine. Are all apartments like this one? Seems kinda rude to announce my presence like that every time I walk through a door.”

“Heh. Just buildings for rich assholes like this one.” His nephew included.

Just like the last time, the elevator glided to a stop on Yamato’s floor and slid them both right out. Less like last time, the door cracked open the instant they were on his landing, slowly swinging outward to reveal an empty frame. Apparently Yamato wasn’t up to bothering with the whole greeting thing this go around. With a wrinkle of his nose, he planted a gentle hand to Akira’s back and ushered him into the penthouse. The door clicked shut behind him, only narrowly missing his heels. Brat. Patience had never been one of Yamato’s strong suits.

He tugged at the back of Akira’s blazer and knelt down, unlacing his boots. “Take off your shoes first.”

Akira scoffed at him and dropped down to his knees to do just that. “I was going to. Just because I didn’t know morningwood doesn’t mean I don’t know _manners_ ,” he said in a snooty tone.

“...With that smart fuckin’ mouth?” he groused back, snapping out a hand and snagging one of his curls to tug. “Manners my ass. You’re just as rude as Yamato is.”

Evidently, he was not impressed with Iwai’s disgruntled dad voice. Akira laughed at him and swatted his hand away from his head, as well as he could without actually touching him. The reminder brought a sharp frown to his face as he stood up and reached down to help Akira back up. “C’mon. Yamato’s prolly in his nerd cave.”

To get to said nerd cave, he took Akira through the wide open living room, which was more challenging than it ought to have been since the whole place was dark as shit. None of the lights were on, and all the heavy wooden blinds had been pulled shut. The only thing that lit up the interior was the enormous fish tank built into the wall, casting all the dark furniture in an ethereal blue glow and arresting Akira’s attention the moment he saw it.

He looked fascinated. His eyes popped wide open, and he abandoned Iwai’s side in a second to get so close to the glass his nose almost touched it. “Iwai. I want a penthouse.”

“Tch." The sucker clicked against the backs of his teeth. "You know they don’t all come with fish, right? This is Abel’s doin’. Think he had it installed himself.” He had to admit, it was pretty neat, but fish upkeep seemed like such a pain in the ass he couldn’t fathom anyone choosing to bother. That Yamato had let him at all was an even bigger surprise. Then again, knowing him, Yamato likely only tolerated them to use as leverage. He probably wasn’t above threatening to drop the water temperature any time Abel even considered displeasing him.

“They’re so pretty,” Akira murmured. He leaned back from the glass just enough that he could follow a vibrantly magenta fish as it darted around the tank. “It’s so different seeing them face to face. Videos and pictures really aren’t the same.”

“Yeah. Guess they wouldn’t be.” Reluctant as he was to do so when Akira was so enthralled, Iwai coaxed him further to the side and shepherded him the rest of the way to Yamato’s office. Sure enough, his nephew was already inside it, bent over a silver gurney and wrestling with a thick cable. He looked like he was trying to fight a shiny black snake. “You okay over there?”

Yamato straightened back up and squinted at him, folding his arms with the cable still wrapped in his fingers. “There you are. What took you so damn long? Did you get lost on your way from the front door?”

“Oh, shut up.” Iwai yanked his half-gone sucker from his mouth and fixed him with a glare. “Akira was admirin’ your fish. Don’t be a dick.”

“Ah.” He loosened his arms again and looked over at the aforementioned android with something like interest in his gaze. Akira met his eyes and rubbed lightly at his bicep.

“Sorry about that. Uhm, I like your pink one.”

A strange look flitted across his face. For a moment, Iwai was afraid he was going to say something cutting and hurt his feelings, but Yamato only made a short noise that sounded like amusement and gestured towards the gurney. “I’ll be sure to pass the message along. Lie down here. Barring something truly bizarre, I don’t expect this will take more than ten minutes.”

Akira obeyed. He sat down on the gurney’s edge and swung his legs on top of it before he tilted backwards. Hopefully he was less nervous this time. No one was going to be using a laser saw on him at least.

As Iwai stood at his side, he glanced up to see Yamato dropping into his chair and rolling over towards him with the cable draped over his knees. Without asking for permission, he pushed his hand up beneath the back of Akira’s head and reached for the bridge of his nose, pinching his fingers around it until Akira spasmed violently. “What are you doing?!”

He let go, but an irritated sneer twisted his mouth. “Shutting you down. Clearly.”

“No. Please.”

Iwai had never seen Yamato roll his eyes so hard. When they stopped, they landed right on Iwai, and he narrowed them into silvery slits of impatience. “Did you not warn him already?”

“Warn him of what?” he snapped back. “He took a goddamned laser saw while he was conscious, I think he’ll be fine.”

Over the next several seconds, Yamato stared at him like there had never been a dumber asshole lumbering through the world like a thawed out caveman than Iwai Munehisa. He sat there in silence as if he was waiting for Iwai to tell him that he was joking, but when he declined to do so, Yamato sighed loudly and tossed his hair out of his eye. “Unfortunately for you, you don’t have a choice. I _can’t_ restore your memories if you’re not shut down. Your statefile is locked while you’re active.”

Akira glanced up at Iwai, who glanced right back at him. Then they both looked at Yamato so blankly that he grit his teeth. “Which _means_ that your statefile can’t be externally edited. Every second you’re conscious, you have a dedicated processor writing everything you see and experience to your statefile. The data in that file is what your brain interprets, not the raw information you take in as input. If I were able to edit it manually while you were awake, I would have the means to completely alter what you see, hear, or think you’re touching. It’s locked for a very good reason.”

“Christ.” Iwai tightened his fingers against Akira’s shoulder and stole a brief glance at him. He seemed every bit as surprised by this news as Iwai was. “But you’re not gonna alter it, you’re just gonna tack his old memories on, right?”

“Obviously.” Yamato flicked a dismissive hand. “However, it’s not as simple as you’re suggesting. I can’t just restore your state as easily as you could a computer from a backup. Normally, you’re supposed to access it from your remote host. But, since your connection was severed, all of this data has been written directly to your local state. To ‘restore’ you means that these two disparate states have to be merged together.”

Leaning back in his seat, he crossed his arms again and regarded them with a mild frown. “Say I did agree to do this while you’re still conscious. It would be the equivalent of trying to inject new memories into a person’s brain while they were fully alert. Even if I were capable of brute forcing it and unlocking your statefile myself, your CPUs would likely burn out trying to process all these new memories while you’re simultaneously writing new data to it.”

Iwai blew out hard. That answered that. He squeezed yet harder at Akira’s shoulder and angled his face down towards him. “Well...what d’you wanna do?”

“It sounds like I don’t have a choice.” A resigned, almost tinny sigh rattled out of him, and Akira chewed at his lip and turned his big grey eyes up at him. “You’ll stay, right?”

“‘Course I will. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

Akira swallowed and lifted his hand, pressing two of his fingertips just behind his earlobe. A narrow panel slid out and exposed the circular port made for the big fiber cable Yamato held. “Okay. I guess I’ll see you when I wake up?”

“You will. Promise.”

He nodded almost absently and lay back again, staring up at the ceiling and curling his fingers tightly. “...Would you do it, Iwai?” It was a simple request, but it still took him by surprise. His heart did something truly embarrassing in his chest as he nodded for him and moved to sit near Akira’s hip. Gently, he curled his fingers around the back of his head, finding the shallow depression and going still. His other hand positioned itself before his face, and he squeezed the bridge of his nose and pressed in on both places.

Akira’s pretty eyes fluttered and slipped shut, his body going slack on the gurney in the wake of his shutdown. He didn’t want to, but Iwai let go of him nonetheless and squeezed at the still hand resting against his thigh.

“My. When did _you_ get so soft?”

His head snapped up to see Yamato smirking at him and already moving to plug the cable into Akira’s head. Iwai’s face collapsed into a stormy scowl. “Prolly when I started takin’ in strays like you.”

Predictably, Yamato chose to ignore him. He swiveled around and presented his back to Iwai, facing his giant monitor and tilting his head back. “Alright. Let’s see what we’ve got.” Whatever he was doing, Iwai hadn’t the faintest idea. He could only watch from over his shoulder as Yamato opened up some sort of folder and used his fingertips to stretch it across the touch screen. “Hm. It would seem you finished his repairs just in time. This statefile is getting unruly.”

“You can look inside it?” Oh. Shit. He just barely resisted the temptation to squirm and looked back down at Akira’s face. “But you can’t actually see ‘em, can you? His memories?”

Yamato answered with a disdainful snort and dropped backwards into his seat. “Of course not. They’re not like movies. His memory banks would be full to bursting if they actually recorded everything he saw.” A few seconds passed before Yamato snapped his head over at him and narrowed his eyes again. “Why?”

“...No reason.”

“ _Ugh_.” An absolutely disgusted noise burst from him, and he turned back to the screen with an extremely judgmental shake of his head. “Nevermind. I regret that I even asked.”

As awkward as that had been, it was kind of cute to watch him hunch over his keyboard and tap away at it with irritated little jabs of his fingers. Yamato had left his hair down today. It hung down around his face while he worked, and Iwai could see that he still had that goofy looking tuft of short hair at the back. He never had figured out what caused it. It looked like a horse had trotted up from behind him and licked the back of his skull.

The squeak of leather disrupted his impolite daydreaming. Yamato was leaning back further in his chair and frowning in his direction. “I’m going to make a backup of his current state. If there are issues with the merge, it’s possible it could prove...problematic. I can’t be sure how it would affect him.”

Oh. Hm. Iwai frowned just as hard and rubbed at the side of his face. “You think there’s a good chance of that?”

“I think that, given the fact that there is not one single professional coder who has never had to fix a merge conflict, it’s worth considering.”

It was bizarre to think about. Someone could save Akira’s whole existence into a computer file and overwrite it any time they chose? Fucking hell. Poor Akira. No wonder he was so resistant to being shut down. There was no possible way for him to be sure that he would wake up as the same person.

His fingers tightened against Akira’s pale hand. “Alright. While you’re at it, someone installed a fuckin’ blocker on him. Take it off for me, would you?”

A heavy silence fell over them both. Yamato swiveled around, his face set in the most baleful expression he’d ever seen in his life. “I hope you realize that would be _profoundly_ unwise. Don’t you think a blocker might have been installed for a reason?”

Iwai might have guessed that’d be his response. Asshole. Yes, Yamato was one of the smartest bastards he’d ever known, and unquestionably more intelligent than he was, but that didn’t mean Iwai was a goddamned knuckledragger. He huffed back at him and bit down on the sucker stick still in his mouth. “Yeah, I did think that, you little smartass. Take it off 'im anyway. I’d bet you my entire bank account that it’s why I found him in pieces. He couldn’t fight back.”

For what felt like ages, Yamato did little more than stare at him. Then he sighed and spun himself back around with a flick of his foot against the floor. “Fine. Strap him down, then. I won’t be held responsible if it turns out that blocker was the only thing preventing him from being homicidal. There are bars on the other side.”

“Akira ain’t like that.” Regardless of what he _was_ like, Iwai knew damn well that Yamato would refuse to uninstall it if he didn’t do as he'd asked. At least they wouldn’t hurt him. And he’d still be there sitting with him in case Akira was scared to wake up alone. He leaned over his body and grabbed the heavy metal bars that would keep him held down, draping them carefully over his chest and his thighs so he could snap him into place. “There. Fuckin' drama queen. Happy?”

Again, Yamato ignored him. He’d opened up a second terminal and was typing what looked like complete gibberish to Iwai. It was nothing but snippets of text bumping higher and higher with each new command until eventually, both Yamato’s eyebrows shot straight up. “Oh. Wow.” Iwai wasn’t even given a chance to respond. Yamato was already staring at Akira with open curiosity, all his impatient disdain evaporating in that split second. “I retract what I said about this favor being uninteresting. Our little friend there seems to have run afoul of the law. This blocker is government issued.”

“ _What_?" he blurted. "How can you tell that?”

Yamato smirked again and moved out of the way, gesturing casually towards his screen. “This big warning banner was a bit of a clue. Apparently it’s a felony to remove it.” Also apparent was that Yamato no longer appeared to find all this one excruciating chore just to appease his uncle. He looked about as gleeful as Iwai had ever seen him, his hands spidering rapidly across the keyboard. At the end of it, he jabbed his index finger down onto the enter key with a haughty little thrust of his pinkie. “There. It’s gone. Your android can once again maim to his heart’s content. Now, let’s find out why the hell he had one to begin with. I thought you said he was some sort of rent bot.”

“Because I thought he _was_.” Iwai clutched at the brim of his hat and adjusted it uncomfortably. “Don’t see what that has to do with this.”

Navigating back to the original folder he’d been working with, Yamato pored over it, scrolling with two of his fingertips. “So far so normal.” He sounded disappointed about it too. “...Wait.” His brow furrowed sharply. “There are two states for the same day.”

Ergh. Iwai squinted at him and squashed the temptation to spit his sucker stick at his head. “Why you’re tellin’ me that like I know what it means?”

“You are hopeless. Duplicate states in the same host don’t happen. There’s no reason to store individual copies within the host instance itself when the entire server is duplicated across multiple data centers. It’s built-in functionality. This had to have been done intentionally.” His pale eyes were bright and focused like lasers, narrowed faintly as he dove deeper into the directory. “Look, there’s another one. And it’s smaller. They’re both smaller. What the fuck? If they were actual duplicates, they should be the exact same size.”

He opened up one file and examined it. Iwai hadn’t expected to see human readable text, but there it was, a little small, but just legible enough that he could make out the timestamp on it. It seemed normal to him. But when Yamato opened the second, it became clear that ‘normal’ it was not. His nephew was deeply perturbed, tilting backwards and blinking rapidly at the screen. The text in this one was a jumbled bunch of complete nonsense. “Why the hell isn’t it decrypted?”

“Huh? Why wouldn’t it be?” Yamato had made it known that he was an idiot about androids, but he knew enough that it struck him as incredibly unlikely that the data that made up a droid’s whole existence wouldn’t be protected in some way. And maybe he wasn’t so off-base. Rather than snap back in annoyance at yet another of Iwai’s ignorant Luddite questions, Yamato inhaled sharply and gripped the corner of his desk.

“No, you’re absolutely right. Every statefile is encrypted. But this is...different. Akira -- well, every android -- has an internal private key that gives him exclusive access to his own statefiles. Any time he accesses them, they’re decrypted automatically by this key. And as I am connected to the remote host through Akira, everything _should_ be decrypted for me. If his private key isn’t compatible with these statefiles, they can’t possibly belong to him.”

How could that be? How could he upload statefiles that weren’t his own? Slowly, Iwai gazed back down at Akira’s pretty face and drew the stick out of his mouth. “What’s that mean, exactly?”

“I...don’t know.”

Iwai was sure that was the first time he’d ever heard Yamato utter those words in the last half-decade. He looked back at him and watched Yamato tip forward, holding one hand over his face and glaring at his monitor like he thought he might be able to intimidate it into spitting out an answer.

A few minutes passed, and Yamato rolled his head and gazed over at Akira intently. “I don’t think your sexbot is actually a sexbot, Iwai.”

“That so?” Something he couldn't name gripped at his heart like a clenched fist between his ribs. He wasn’t sure if it was relief or skepticism or hope or something else entirely. “What is he, then?”

Yamato’s mouth twisted into a devilishly pleased smile.

“Something _much_ more interesting.”


	15. Chapter 15

* * *

Iwai still wasn’t sure he’d managed to wrap his head around what had Yamato in such a goddamned tizzy. And it was pointless to ask, because his nephew was completely oblivious to him, throwing up multiple windows on his screen and utterly absorbed in his task. From what he could see, Yamato was scouring through the directory of statefiles and jotting down something he couldn’t make out.

Since he wasn’t in the mood for more condescending responses anyway, Iwai remained silent at Akira’s side and pulled out his Tab to look up information about statefiles and maybe try to piece together what the hell was going on himself.

Despite Yamato’s attitude, it wasn’t like he was completely ignorant about droids. He’d managed to put Akira back together well enough, thanks very much. The simple fact of the matter was that their internal workings had never been relevant to him in any way. He didn’t need to know about ‘statefiles’ and cloud storage to be able to reattach a handful of missing limbs. How were you supposed to chart territory you’d never needed to navigate before?

Luckily -- and to his surprise -- Iwai’s first dive into the world of artificial intelligence was slightly easier to grasp than he’d figured it would be. There were a bunch of dumb vocab words that probably didn’t need to be as complicated as they were, but he’d found a handful of articles more friendly to a layman that proved to be a big help. And, as much as he hated to admit it, he had a pretty solid foundation of understanding courtesy of his nephew’s patronizing.

Yamato’s explanation of what the statefile was and did made enough sense to him. ‘Remote host’ and ‘local state’ were a little fuzzier. What the fundamentals seemed to boil down to was that Akira’s brain was stored in his body in the form of his CPU’s while his actual consciousness was stored in a statefile in some big ass server elsewhere. Kind of weird, but he could work with it.

Given that, the process of securing the access between a droid and its state seemed pretty goddamned important. From what he’d gathered so far, each droid had their own dedicated ‘instance’ (it was a computer, why couldn’t they just call it a motherfucking computer) that was used exclusively for storing these states. His eyes started to glaze over when the article prattled on about ingress and egress points that didn’t involve buildings and gunfights, but it was clear enough from the context that it was referring to the ability for data to flow in and out of every robot’s magic space computer. Basically, every instance was only accessible by the droid who owned it. There. They should have let him write the article.

Iwai had to admit, if only in the privacy of his own mind, that even after all his research he still had no idea what had Yamato’s panties in such a knot over this. So what if Akira was the only one who could get into his instance? He was perfectly capable of accessing the internet himself. There wasn’t anything to prevent him from uploading some other android’s state to his own instance if he wanted to. Right?

Eugh, he was starting to get a headache. Iwai squeezed his eyes shut, pinched at the bridge of his nose, and massaged the inner corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Yamato, I know you’re havin’ fun playin’ Detective Conan over there, but we’re well past the ten minutes you told him. Can’t we just get him goin’ and you get back to this after?”

“No.”

Blunt as ever. Iwai glared at the back of his head until Yamato bent his arm and gestured vaguely with his hand. “I can hardly see the contents of his instance if he’s not plugged in, now can I?”

“...Can’t you?”

Yamato chuckled at him, less smugly than he would have expected. “I’m flattered you have such remarkable faith in my hacking abilities, but no. I cannot. Droid boxes are among the most secure in the world. Their private keys are made up of a combination of a constantly rotating encryption key and a physical one that’s unique to each droid. You can think of it as a sort of internal signature. If I were able to get hold of Akira’s encryption key before it rotated, it still wouldn’t do me any good without the other half. Hence me having to plug him in like a Neanderthal. Anyway, I’m almost done. Just give me a little longer.”

In fairness to Yamato, he _had_ said ‘barring something truly bizarre’. Evidently this was bizarre enough to merit the distraction. Iwai huffed and turned back to Akira, sliding his Tab onto the gurney near his calf so he could graze his fingertips across the back of his pretty hand. He really hoped that Akira wasn’t upset that they’d gone so far over when he woke up.

He really hoped that, when he woke up, Akira would still be Akira.

He glanced over at the back of Yamato’s head again and rubbed the pad of his thumb against one of Akira’s smooth fingernails. “You figure anything out about those mystery states yet?”

“Mm. A few things.” His chair spun around. Yamato faced him and folded one of his legs, his ankle resting against the knee opposite. “These mystery states are all smaller than Akira’s states for the same days, by a not insignificant margin. I would guess they all cover only a handful of hours each and not a full twenty-four hour period like a normal state ought to. I also determined that this is a recent development. I ran a search on the instance to isolate all the duplicate dates, and none exist prior to the last few months. Beyond that, I can’t discern any particular pattern. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for why certain days have them and certain days do not. That’s what I’m currently trying to find out.”

Interesting. Iwai frowned a little to himself and offered him a short nod. “Alright. So what’s got you so convinced that they’re not his? He can do whatever he wants on the internet. Couldn’t he make up a different key that’s stored somewhere else? Maybe he just wants to protect somethin’ he doesn’t want other people to be able to find. Most of us do.”

A pause, then his pale face schooled into a look of disbelieving amusement before he shook his head. Iwai wasn’t sure he liked that expression. “He certainly could generate an external encryption key that’s stored where I can’t reach it. That’s true. I’m surprised you thought of that.” Ass. “That said, states being pushed and pulled -- and writing to them in the first place -- are a completely involuntary process. Akira couldn’t carve out a section of his memories to protect any more than you or I could create memories in a specific part of our brains, or control the beating of our hearts.”

It was still strange to see Yamato so mystified. He swiveled back around and resumed his task, typing something into his black and yellow terminal and then sitting back to watch it run. It spit back a bunch of text he couldn’t quite read, but they looked like web addresses.

“Now what’re you doin’?”

Yamato sighed at him and declined to look back. “Research. Just because I can’t _see_ a pattern doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. I’m running a search for significant news articles that happened on or around the dates of the duplicate states.”

Idly, he tilted backwards in his chair, rocking back and forth and staring intently at the screen as news article after news article opened up. The rhythmic squeak of his rocks grew further and further between the more he read, until eventually they stopped altogether. Iwai didn’t need to see his face to feel the sudden tension rolling off him.

It made him nervous as fuck.

When Yamato turned around again, his eyes fell to Akira. Gone was the almost playful spark of interest in his gaze. Now he was staring him down like Akira might sit up and start breathing fire at any moment. Iwai wanted to shake him. “Well? What the hell is it? What’d you find?”

He hadn’t realized how much he’d miss that haughtily entertained attitude from Yamato until after it had completely evaporated. His face was smooth to the point of being almost impassive, but his coloring lent a glacial quality to it that made him look like he was gazing at the both of them through the other side of a wall of ice.

Finally, Yamato spoke. “There certainly does seem to be a pattern after all.” Even his voice was guarded with frost. “The very first of the duplicate states is from early April. You might remember that being right around the time that disgraced Olympic medalist turned himself into the police. The very last duplicate is from three weeks ago. You might _also_ remember that three weeks ago was--”

“When Kaneshiro got busted.” Iwai’s insides twisted uncomfortably. “Yamato, that’s fuckin’- that’s nonsense. C’mon. You can’t really think that two coincidences make a pattern?”

“No,” Yamato agreed. “It is, however, a pattern when eight more of these duplicates correspond with the arrest records of pettier criminals, each of whom mysteriously turned themselves in.”

Iwai’s stomach roiled like a ship in violent, icy waters. He swallowed and looked back down Akira, his face still and peaceful and so innocent. “Oh,” he said stupidly, then grit his teeth so hard he accidentally bit his sucker stick in half. “Fuck’s sake, he was working for Reid. You don’t really believe that’s him, do you?”

He narrowed his eyes and leered down his nose at him, both arms folding across his narrow chest. “I _believe_ I’m comfortable not risking those odds and assuming that he is. What do you think is going to happen if you restore a potential vigilante who’s hellbent on seeing people like you and I in prison? Are you hoping that your good deed will be enough for him to look the other way?”

“I-” Iwai bit down on the inside of his cheek before he pulled the broken stick out of his mouth. “So, what then? Are you sayin’ you’re not gonna help me fix him?”

Yamato hissed cobra-like between his teeth and fixed him with a hard glower. “Why should I? So he can endanger all three of us? No one knows how he operates. It’s certainly not his fucking powers of persuasion forcing pimps and drug dealers like Kaneshiro to voluntarily surrender themselves to the police.” Both his arms dropped to his sides, his fists clenched and cold anger on his face. “I refuse to let _anyone_ threaten what Abel and I have built. Not even you, Uncle.”

Fuck. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Was Yamato even going to let Akira leave? His stomach dropped so hard it disappeared between his feet, even as he climbed up onto them and planted himself in front of Akira.

What was he going to do if it really came to that? Fuyuko was the only family who had ever given a damn about him. He knew already that he didn’t have it in him to hurt her only child.

But he couldn’t let him hurt Akira either.

After several agonizing seconds of this silent standoff, Yamato squeezed his eyes shut and dragged his fingers through his long hair. An impatient sigh burst from his nose. “Would you stop looking at me like I’m about to throw him into an incinerator? Akira -- _this_ Akira -- doesn’t appear to pose any danger. The wisest course of action is to leave him as is. I can provision a clean instance to host his current state and leave the vigilante safely in stasis where it belongs.”

Before he could help himself, Iwai snorted loudly and glared at him. “Yeah? And what’re you gonna tell him when he wakes up just as clueless as he was before? Christ, Yamato.”

“That’s not my problem.”

Iwai’s shoulders slumped. He dropped back down against the gurney, his elbows digging into his spread knees and his fingertips pushing against his eyelids. “Yamato, don’t do this. Please.”

They didn’t even have any proof it was him. Someone could have framed him. If it was this easy for Yamato to plug him in and fuck around with his states, who was to say those bastards who had torn him apart hadn’t done the same? Or someone else entirely? Maybe someone had framed him and that’s why he’d been jumped like that. The level of violence made a lot more sense if it was some shitty gangbangers who felt so viscerally threatened by him.

And fuck. It didn’t _matter_ whether the vigilante was or wasn’t him. They had no right to...to _withhold_ Akira’s entire identity just because they were afraid of what it might be. The very thought of it made him sick. Akira had trusted him. He let them shut him down because he trusted Iwai with his vulnerability, and only now was he beginning to understand the true gravity of that.

The person Akira used to be was in his hands, and he had no right to destroy him.

Iwai grasped the brim of his hat and pulled it off, letting it hang between his knees. “...What do you want me to do? I’ll do whatever I can to keep you and your boy safe. I promise. If you do this for me, and Akira tries to come after you, then I won’t stop you from doin’ what you need to do. But can’t you at least give him the chance to show you whether or not he’s not going to?”

He lifted his head, and Yamato stared down at him with his arms folded and a subtle look of discomfort on his face. “Why are you doing this? For fuck’s sake, you don’t even know him, Iwai. He could have a completely different personality. You have no idea what he’s capable of, and no guarantee that he won’t come after you just as quickly as he would any of the rest of us.”

Iwai sat up a little higher and clutched tightly at his hat. “Because I’m willin’ to roll those dice. Maybe he is different. But so what? I’m not willin’ to throw his whole life away on a ‘maybe’. And if you’re not gonna help me, I’ll find someone else who will.”

Almost half a minute passed them by. Yamato huffed loudly and turned away, dropping into his seat. “You are absolutely impossible. Fine. If he fucks you over, I’m not bailing you out of prison.”

“Noted.”

He found himself smiling faintly. Iwai jammed his hat back on and pivoted towards Akira, resting a heavy hand on his thigh and squeezing. The sounds of Yamato’s angry typing filled the room, his fingers striking the flat keyboard so hard he could actually hear the vibrating feedback. His snits hadn’t changed much from when he was little.

It only took him a couple of minutes to finish. Yamato ran a few more short commands and stood up, crossed the room, and tugged the fiber from Akira’s head. “There. The next time you ask me a ‘favor’, I’m charging you hazard pay.”

This time, Iwai was the one who ignored him. His heart skipped a beat or four, and he shuffled up higher to cradle Akira’s curly head between his hands. Yamato had brought up plenty of valid points. The thought of Akira being so different as to be unrecognizable set like lead in his throat, but he was still determined to do this. What Iwai wanted didn’t matter. Only Akira mattered, and doing right by him.

He pressed in on either side of his skull and booted him back up.

Akira’s beautiful grey eyes flickered open. He watched the cameras start with tiny little adjustments of his pupils. When they rolled down towards him, Iwai’s chest flared with something hot and sickeningly sentimental, and it only burned brighter when Akira smiled at him. “Iwai.”

“Hey there. How’re you feelin’?”

“I-” The metal bars rattled beneath him as he tried to sit up. They rattled harder in his alarm until Iwai dropped a hand to his chest and started reaching for the latches.

“Relax. It’s okay. Just a precaution is all.” He got them undone and stood up to lift each one off him, letting them both fall to the other side and helping Akira to sit up. “Are you...alright? Everything seem like it should?”

“I think so.” Akira sung his legs over the edge and closed his eyes again. “I remember…” His big grey eyes popped open wide. He thrust himself up off the gurney so violently Iwai almost fell over trying to grab him, holding onto his shoulders as Akira clawed at his own arms in a panic. His fingers slid back and forth over his forearms and up to his biceps as if to make sure they were real. “I remember everything. Those guys, they...and then…”

His head snapped backwards, both his eyes lifting back up towards Iwai’s. Slowly, Akira relaxed between his heavy hands where Iwai rubbed uselessly at his shoulders. He allowed Iwai to help him ease back down onto the gurney. “Sorry. That’s the last thing I remember, and then there’s a big...gap until I woke up in your apartment.”

That’s about what he’d have expected. Iwai nodded for him and squeezed his shoulder. “Can you tell us what happened? Why those people attacked you like that?”

Akira didn’t answer right away. He seemed interested in Yamato’s behemoth of a computer, the yellow light reflecting from his dark eyes reminding Iwai of a little black alley cat. Finally, he dragged his palms against his new pants and tilted his face back up towards Iwai. “They found me on my way home from work. They were asking me about Donovon and what he sold and how he made people disappear. I couldn’t tell them anything. I don’t have anything to do with that side of it. Donovon thinks I don’t even know he sells drugs. When I couldn’t answer, they got angry.”

Silence lapsed over the three of them and filled the room like humidity thick enough to choke a man. He paused for a time, giving Akira all the time he needed to say more. But he didn’t. Iwai’s throat felt so tightly knotted he couldn’t swallow or so much as breathe for a moment. He didn’t even want to look at Yamato. He could already guess what he thought.

“I’m real sorry, Akira,” he murmured back. “Reid’ll be pretty gutted. Think he had a hunch that it was his fault you got hurt. Confirmation isn’t gonna feel good. But we’ll worry about that later.” A flicker of surprise, then uncertainty flit across Akira’s face before he accepted Iwai’s outstretched hand and stood up. “C’mon. I’ll take you home or wherever else you wanna go.”

“Okay. Thank you.” His smile was soft and sweetly earnest, and it faltered as Akira turned to see Yamato’s stony face leveled at him. “Thank you too, Yamato. Is...there a problem?”

“That remains to be seen.” Yamato curled his lip and opened the door to his office. “I trust you can find the way out on your own.”

It snapped curtly behind them, but Iwai ignored it as hard as possible and slid his arms around Akira, guiding him back outside the penthouse and into the elevator. “Don’t mind him. He wasn’t raised in a barn, but an underground bunker ain’t much better.”

This time, the elevator felt even more like sanctity than all the other ones. Iwai leaned against the back wall and tilted his head against it, closing his eyes and wishing he had a cigarette so fucking bad he could damn near taste the paper and peppery smoke on his tongue.

Yamato was never going to forgive him for this.

Akira had lied right to their faces.


	16. Chapter 16

* * *

It felt a little surreal to see such an immediate difference in Akira. On the way here, he’d clutched at Iwai’s wrist like he was convinced someone would lunge out from the depths of an alley and try to bludgeon him with a rusted pipe. This Akira was guarded, but he wasn’t afraid. He walked with purpose, observing the crowds in silence with both hands pushed into his pockets and his dark eyes scanning the sea of faces surrounding them.

Iwai mirrored him and stuffed his own hands into the pockets of his jacket. It was so nice to have it back. Kaoru had somehow managed to get it cleaned for him while he’d been absorbed in fixing Akira’s middle, and only now that he was wearing it again did he realize just how naked he’d felt in its absence.

“So,” he said, his voice more gruff than he’d meant for it to be.

Those gunmetal irises slid towards him. “So?”

“So where am I takin’ you? You got somewhere to stay, right?” Akira had all his old memories back now. Frankly, Iwai was surprised he wasn’t chomping at the bit to ditch him and go find his old friends, or go see Reid, or do anything that wasn’t hanging out with a forty year old man and his kid. Especially after said man’s nephew had been overtly threatening to him right before kicking them both out.

He’d been stuck with Iwai for a little over a week -- surely Akira was sick of him by now. But maybe he wasn’t. Maybe Iwai was just that good a kisser.

The reminder had his eyes lingering on Akira’s lips when a soft frown overtook them, followed by a subtle flex of his fingers. He could see the material of his pants shift with it. “I...do,” Akira agreed, faltering slightly. “Have somewhere to stay.”

As Iwai stopped, Akira followed suit and glanced up at him in question. “I’m sensin’ a ‘but’.”

One of his hands slipped free of his pocket and curled around the back of his neck instead, his head rolling slightly as he responded with a baffled chuckle. Fuck, Akira did that to him on purpose. It should be illegal to straddle the line of endearing and alluring so effortlessly. “But,” he conceded, “I was...hoping I could stay with you. Just for a little longer. I’m not quite ready to go back yet.”

Like he was going to tell him no. That admission alone had his heart fluttering like an embarrassing schoolboy. As soon as Akira’s hand fell back to his side, Iwai reached over to squeeze his neck in its stead and began to shepherd him along in the direction of his apartment. “Alright. You talked me into it. I think Reid gave me enough cash to cover your repairs and a good month’s rent anyway, so I s’ppose I can let you kick around my place awhile if that’s what you wanna do.”

Why Akira did want that, he had no idea. Maybe he didn’t actually have anywhere to stay and just didn’t want Iwai to know about it. He’d already done plenty to demonstrate that he was a prideful sort of android, so it would hardly be out of character for him. On the other hand, he could very well have a place to stay that just wasn’t as comfortable for him as Iwai’s apartment. Or as safe, for that matter. It was possible that he was still afraid of his attackers and just didn’t want to show as much.

Hm.

Akira probably wasn’t up to an interrogation right then, so Iwai didn’t press the matter. He simply led the rest of the way home in silence and unlocked the door, opening it up so Akira could step inside first. It was late enough in the day that Kaoru was home from school. He sure was glad to see Akira there up on his feet, all his memories intact and looking none the worse for the wear.

That evening was just like all the others before it, save that Akira had use of his legs now. While he and Kaoru ate dinner, Akira kept them company in the living room and chatted with Kaoru about his day. Kaoru’s day specifically, since Akira seemed content to stay mum about what all had happened at Yamato’s place. It suited Iwai just fine. He used the time they spent talking to pop his Tab, settle into the couch, and read all about the Phantom Thief and fugitive he’d apparently been harboring in his apartment for the last week or so.

To his utter lack of surprise, there were dozens of articles about him, and even more dumb teenagers down in the comments of every single one claiming to have used some kinda ‘secret’ message board to ask the Thief for help. Couldn’t be that secret if this many kids knew about it. It sounded like a bunch of urban legend nonsense to him, but evidently it was one that actually worked. A lot of the guys who’d been arrested had all tended to spend a great deal of time around high schoolers. Interesting.

Iwai swiped from one article to the next, starting from Kaneshiro’s arrest and working his way backwards. It was strangely entertaining to go from interviews with house wives crediting the Thief with changing their abusive husbands overnight, to stories about shitty managers being arrested for embezzlement attributed to an unknown vigilante, all the way back to the earliest articles about that Olympic athlete prick. They offered only the most tenuous speculation about what had happened to make him want to admit to molesting young girls, with the clear implication that the notion of a ‘Phantom Thief’ was merely a prank from some artsy juvenile delinquent. If only they knew.

Eventually, the living room went quiet again, and Iwai put his Tab away before either of them could see what he’d been reading. Kaoru turned in shortly after that, bidding them both goodnight and leaving the two of them to retire to Iwai’s bedroom.

Akira didn’t wait for Iwai’s permission to make himself at home. He shed his new pants and blazer and dropped into his bed in only a pair of black boxers and the white t-shirt he’d picked out earlier, then lay on his back and turned the TV on. He could hear him rifling through channels while he brushed his teeth in the bathroom and got ready for bed.

It was awfully domestic of them. Iwai had always bucked against such an idea before; casual flings were about all the human contact he’d ever needed, and the very thought of sharing his space with anyone other than Kaoru made his skin crawl. Akira’s presence was different, though. Comforting. It probably shouldn’t be, now that he had an inkling of what the android got up to before all this mess, but...it was. Despite everything, he liked having Akira nearby. He liked hearing him in the next room. He liked falling asleep next to him and waking up beside him and feeling his weight sink into the other side of the bed like it belonged there.

He liked that Akira had remembered the life he used to have and still chose to stay with him.

All his nighttime rituals done, Iwai cast his shirt onto the floor and collapsed into bed beside him. It had been one hell of a week. His back still ached something fierce from all his hunching over Akira’s body for so many days, so it was nice to lie down and not be expected to do anything more intensive than indulge in the ample warmth radiating from his companion. He’d make for a damn nice bed partner in the middle of winter. Anyone who thought of androids as icy cold machines had clearly never tried to handle an overheated laptop before.

For the next few minutes, Iwai did exactly that. He lay flat on his back and watched the flickering light of the TV through his closed eyelids as Akira remained absorbed in whatever it was he was watching. It was hard to tell without looking since Akira always kept the volume low so as not to disturb him. Apparently not low enough, though, because a sudden spate of gunfire had his eyes flickering open. Beside him, Akira scrambled to turn the TV down and peeked over at him with an almost sheepish look on his face. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. Surprised to see you watchin’ this.” He sat up with a faint groan and tilted his pillow to lie propped up against it instead. On the screen was a familiar-looking gunslinger dressed all in black with an augmented arm and a cybernetic horse. Not Akira’s standard fare for sure. Over the last week, he’d demonstrated a clear preference for heist movies and spy thrillers. Iwai scratched at his stubbled jaw and inclined his head towards the screen. “Wouldn’a pegged you as someone who likes Westerns.”

Akira shrugged and toyed with the remote in his hands. It made Iwai strangely glad to see that he still had all the same quirks as before. “I don’t actually know if I do, to tell you the truth. I remembered our conversation about them, and it occurred to me that I’ve never actually seen one before. I wanted to see what they’re like.”

“What, really? You never saw any even before all this?”

He shook his head and settled back against the pillows, his eyes trained on the screen and his hands folded over his abdomen. Together, they watched for a good few minutes before Akira glanced over at him from the corner of his dark eyes. “It’s...strange. I have clear memories of all the days I spent with you -- remember all the gaps that were there before and everything -- but now I have all the old ones too. It’s a weird feeling to have all my former memories back while also remembering what it felt like not to have them at the same time. If that makes any sense.”

Akira rolled over onto his side, curling his arm beneath his head and gazing up at him. “I never asked before. How did you find me?”

Ah. He was surprised Akira was asking him that now. Iwai did the same, turning over as well and ignoring the TV in favor of focusing on Akira and his pretty face. “Tell you the truth? You just got real lucky. Reid came in right after the guy who sold me all the parts he dug outta you and asked me to find you. Yamato helped me track the kid down. Sorry he was such a dick to you, by the way.”

Akira lifted one smooth shoulder and frowned to himself. “It’s alright. Donovon is the one who asked you to find me?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh. I remember you telling me he was the one paying for all my repairs, I just…” Bending his arm, Akira rested his head atop it and redirected his frown towards the bedding beneath them. “I didn’t realize he’d worry about me so much. To ask someone like you for help, I mean. I only missed one shift.”

“No?” Iwai lifted his eyebrows. “Reid obviously cares about you an awful lot if he was willin’ to drop so much money to get you back on your feet. Why wouldn’t he be worried? ‘Sides, I sorta assumed you two might be...y’know.”

That was enough to make Akira’s eyes widen. He jerked his head up off his arm and wrinkled his nose sharply. “What, involved? No, of course not. Donovon is engaged. To a human,” he specified, turning over onto his back again and gazing up at the ceiling. “It was never like that. Honestly, I always got the vibe that droids sort of creep him out. That’s why I never told him.”

Interesting. He did remember catching a few glimpses of a black gold ring on Reid’s left hand. But if that was the case-- “So, what, he just dropped all that dosh on his employee-of-the-month? You got a whole green hand on you?”

“Don’t say it like that.” Akira scoffed at that and rolled his head towards him to shake it. “I think Donovon is just a lot like you. He seems scary, but he’s secretly a big pushover who likes to help people out.” He fell silent for a bit, lifting his arm up and rotating his wrist as he stared at his own pale skin. “You know that big scar on his arm? He told me that he got it from his mom. He said she held it in a wood-burning stove.”

Fucking hell. Iwai sucked in between his teeth and winced, but Akira continued before he could interject. “I think he sees himself in me and wants to be the kind of...guardian, I guess, that he never had. I just didn’t realize how much it meant to him until now.”

He sighed then. Akira reached up and mussed at his own curly hair, glancing up at Iwai and furrowing his brows. That same guilty look he’d seen him make at Yamato’s place flashed across his face. “You won’t tell him? Donovon? You won’t tell him that what happened is his fault, will you?”

Iwai fished around with his tongue for a lollipop that wasn’t there and flopped over onto his back as well. “I figure what you do or don’t tell Reid is your business, not mine. But...” A faint groan eased out of him as he tilted his head back and popped his neck. “I do think it’d be in your best interest to find _somethin_ ’ to tell him. He’s gonna wonder.”

He could feel Akira’s eyes on him, as heavy as any person’s gaze. Almost felt like the iron they resembled.

“Y’know, Kaoru asked me what happened to you when I first brought you here. Obviously I couldn’t answer him exactly, but I could at least guess at a few things. Woulda made sense if you’d been unlucky enough to get yourself dragged off to a chopshop, but I figured it wasn’t that when I got a look inside you. Professionals would’ve gutted you completely. If I had found you after somethin’ like that, you’d have been an empty husk. Nothin’ left to save.”

There was a pinch to Akira’s delicate black eyebrows now, his teeth sunk into his bottom lip, but he was silent as Iwai went on. “You could prolly say it was the cultists if you wanted. I think most people’d buy that, and Reid doesn’t seem like he keeps up with droid politics. But it could be a hard sell if he does. That kinda violence is pretty unusual for attacks like yours. Those cultists might be fuckin’ freaks, but even they don’t normally get that personal.”

Akira was completely still on the bed beside him. Every reminder of what he was came in the form of his unmoving chest, all the breaths he didn’t take, and the way he didn’t need to blink for intervals that lasted just a little too long. Really, Iwai would never have been able to guess he was lying if he didn’t already know it.

He settled deeper into the bed and gazed at Akira gazing back at him. Finally, the kid broke from his mannequin-like stiffness and blinked a little harder, as if Iwai had just produced a needle and popped him right out of a particularly deep daydream. “...Personal?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”

“Mm.” A pause, and Iwai reached over to take his hand, drawing his arm over to him and grazing his fingertips across the seam he’d painted there. “You remember. You need real specialized tools to inflict the kinda body damage they did on you. Not somethin’ most people can carry around out in the open, so not somethin’ anyone’d have on hand if they happened to see you out in the wild and decided you were the one they were gonna make an example of. Someone hunted you down on purpose. That’d be obvious if Reid thought about it for just a few seconds. And he’s a smart guy.”

The furrow between his brows dug itself a little deeper, and Akira cocked his head. “So...what should I tell him then?”

Iwai shrugged. “Dunno. You could try tellin’ him it was a case of mistaken identity.”

Akira looked confused. His head canted yet further as he pushed himself up to sit, turning his back on the tv and folding his legs. “What do you mean?”

“What I said.” He snorted in amusement and sat up as well, snatching Akira’s pillow and stuffing it behind his back for some extra support. It seemed like this conversation was gonna be awhile. “I know I don’t need to tell you what you went through. That kinda torture? They really had it out for you, kid. Reid thinks highly of you. I don’t think he’s gonna be convinced that you’ve made a bunch of enemies who thought that a good ten million yen was a worthy tradeoff for leavin’ you to burn yourself to death in an underpass full of trash. Not all on your own. Either you gotta tell him they went after you because of him, or let him think that those gangbanger pricks just tortured the wrong person.” Casually, he waved a hand and watched the subtle shift of Akira’s dark irises. “Maybe they thought you were the mysterious phantom sendin’ guys like them to prison.”

Shock alit over his pale face for only a split second, but it was enough that Iwai caught it. He tilted backwards slightly and moved to grip both his knees. “Why would they think that?”

Now Akira was getting it. His big eyes narrowed by the slightest sliver, and his voice caught an edge to it that betrayed his real question.

Why would _you_ think that?

Iwai dismissed it with a flicker of his fingers against his bent knee and pretended to take Akira’s question at face value.

“Christ, you really wanna put a lot of work into this lie, don’t you?” he complained, squinting at him and scraping at his jaw again. “Why’s it matter why they would think that? You think Reid’s really gonna ask? Look, if he does, it ain’t that farfetched. Shibuya was that asshole Kaneshiro’s haunt, and Reid mentioned that you lived close by. No one knows anything about the real thief, so who’s gonna contradict you if you say they thought you looked like the guy who busted their boss? ‘Specially since that happened right around the time of your attack. I don’t see any reason for Reid to doubt you if that’s the story you decide to go with.”

The subtlest edge of discomfort lined Akira’s face. His fingernails dug deeper into his knees but otherwise remained eerily still. Iwai sighed at him and dragged his fingertips down along the back of his own neck. “You tell him whatever you want to. You don’t have to listen to me. But if it’s that important for you to spare Reid’s feelings, I think this is your only bet. And it might be more believable than the truth. Kinda hard to swallow that you got all those guys pissed enough to dismember you like that just ‘cause you couldn’t tell them the in’s and out’s of Reid’s operation.”

For a scant few seconds, Iwai hesitated, then leaned closer to him and let his heavy palm curl against the back of Akira’s neck. “Look at it this way. If you spin this story for him, at least you and Reid can both come out of it smellin’ like roses. Reid won’t feel like shit for thinkin’ he’s responsible for getting you jumped, and you’ll just be an innocent kid who got caught in some fucked up crossfire and didn’t deserve what happened to you.”

They stayed like that for awhile. Akira remained utterly silent, his neck hot beneath Iwai’s hand and his fingernails biting shallow half moons into the skin of his knees. Finally, he lifted his head. His face cracked and his eyes, big and unsure, spilled with fear and uncertainty and raw pain. “What if it wasn’t a mistake?” he asked. “If they did have the right person, would I have deserved it?”

Fuck. His sternum throbbed like Akira had suckerpunched it. He felt as cracked down the middle as Akira looked, and he dragged him forward and clasped him as tightly to his chest as he could. “No.” Iwai’s nose buried itself in his muss of black curls, stirring them with every breath. He was gratified to feel Akira’s hands clutch at his naked back. “Nothing you could have done would _ever_ justify what those evil motherfuckers did to you. _Nothing_.”

Though it was the last thing he wanted to do, Iwai pulled away from him, staring directly into his eyes and grabbing a handful of his black hair. “Even if they did have the right android, what’s it matter to me? All I know you for is a mouthy punkass who’s as nice to my kid as he is rude to me.”

And it was true. He’d already decided that he didn’t care that Yamato was right. He didn’t care if Akira was secretly a dangerous phantom thief with a terrifying aptitude for charming rat snakes into a cobra’s den. Fuck’s sake, he’d gotten himself dismembered for his trouble. If he was still that hellbent on helping people at his own peril, who did Iwai think he was to try and stop him?

He leaned back a bit further and let his hand slide back down to Akira’s slender neck, his thumb coming around to rest against his cheek. “...And if they didn’t have the right android, you could do a lot worse than be mistaken for a mysterious thief who always does right by the little guy. That doesn’t seem so bad to me.”

Another burst of surprise flashed across Akira’s face. He could see the tiny adjustment of his pupils even in the dark of his room, lit up only in pale blues from the TV. Curling his fingers tighter into the tattooed skin of Iwai’s back, he pushed forward and closed his eyes.

Iwai had told Yamato that he was willing to roll the dice for Akira’s sake, but it was very quickly becoming apparent that he would do a lot more than that for him. Whatever scraps of faith he’d managed to hold onto through life, he was happy to put every one of them into this kid who has fallen into his lap in literal pieces.

Just like last time, he tilted his head and closed his own eyes as well, slid his arms around him, and kissed Akira back.


	17. Chapter 17

* * *

His fingers curled into claws, the very roots of Akira’s dark hair gripped tight between his knuckles, and an involuntary jerk of his hips sent him deeper into the hot confines of his throat. Fucking hell. For all his misgivings about droids and their potential bite force, there was a hell of a lot to be said for a partner who didn’t need to breathe.

Iwai swore under his own breath and forcibly relaxed his hold on Akira’s silky curls, dragging his blunt fingers back and forth against his scalp as if to soothe it. Not that he seemed to need it. Akira was utterly absorbed in his task, both hands splayed out against Iwai’s hips and keeping him held firmly in place. He couldn’t even begin to describe how novel it was to have a partner strong enough to be the one holding _him_ down.

The pads of his thumbs brushed almost sweetly against the insides of his hips and traced the shallow lines there that trailed downward his thighs. With his eyes still closed, Akira began the slide back upwards. Iwai watched him all the while and admired his pretty eyelashes, so thick and dark and fanned against his smooth cheeks. He’d never been much for poetry, but even he couldn’t look at them and think of anything less than beautiful black butterflies. Well, he could. It was a great deal easier not to think of anything at all when Akira pushed his head back down again and swallowed around him. His tongue was slick and hot against the underside of his cock, and capable of things he couldn’t have dreamed up in his wildest fantasies. He could see why people were willing to risk their junk braving roblowjobs now. You took the good with the bad.

In a strange way, Akira had managed to reverse their positions from before. Now Iwai was the helpless one, utterly at Akira’s mercy. Though, unlike him, Iwai hadn’t lost his legs -- he just couldn’t feel them. His toes had dug so hard into the carpet for purchase that they’d gone numb, but he didn’t have enough blood left in his brain to give a damn. Akira gave head like there was an Olympic event for sucking dick, and he wasn’t going to be satisfied going home with anything less than the gold.

Iwai cursed again and rolled his head back against the bed. Much as he was enjoying the privilege of watching him, it was getting to be too much. He wasn’t quite ready to give this up, and if he kept staring at the shape of Akira’s beautiful lips pursed around his shaft, it was going to happen whether he liked it or not.

As if taking pity on him, Akira slid back up the length of his cock and paused there, opened his eyes, and closed his lips around the furls of his head. His chest heaved with the desperate breath he took as Iwai stared back at him and those big, velvety grey eyes. For a hot second, he looked strangely...innocent there, poised over his lap and grazing gentle fingertips against Iwai’s sweaty thighs. Then a positively _wicked_ glint burned in his gaze. For all that his mouth couldn’t shift when it was so occupied with other things, it didn’t matter; his smirk reached into every corner of his pretty face, and he shoved downwards until his nose flattened right up against Iwai’s abdomen.

His cock hit the back of his throat. The hot, tight walls of it constricted around him and convulsed almost like a real throat would.

And then it began to buzz.

His thighs snapped shut around Akira’s curly head as electrified pleasure fried a path through his cock and set fire to each and every one of his nerves. The hardcore thrum of his throat rocked his world so hard that even his brain felt rattled. Iwai came hard enough he nearly blacked out, laid flat on the bed and staring up at his ceiling in an overheated daze.

Between his legs, Akira sat up and wiped delicately at his mouth with the back of one hand. “Are you okay?”

He could only manage an undignified wheeze in response. Amused, Akira lifted higher and climbed up onto the bed to hover over him. “Iwai?”

“Eugh. Ain’t come that early since I was sixteen,” he groused. He hadn’t even had time to warn him. “Fuck. Shit. Sorry ‘bout that. Are _you_ okay? I didn’t mean to- d’you need me to help you...y’know, get it out?”

“Hm?” Akira straddled his hips and sat back over his lap before he smiled. “Oh, that? It’s fine. I can rinse it out later. My throat comes out.”

“...Oh.” Huh. Iwai made a slight face, but he remained still beneath him and let his heavy hands fall to Akira’s hips where he rubbed them absently. “Shit, Akira. The rest of you vibrate like that too?” he asked, rolling his head to the side and blinking up at him from beneath sweat-heavy eyelids.

This time, Akira had ample room for the smirk that gripped at his mouth. He leaned over him, impish and sinfully beautiful, then smiled and spread his hands out on either side of Iwai’s head. “You want to find out?”

Fuck yeah he did. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d come only literal seconds ago. Just the look on Akira’s face was enough to make his dick jump with interest and arousal burn a hole in his gut like a bullet. Christ, he was so fucking hot. His back flattened against the bed as Akira pounced, kissing him hard and deep and dragging his nimble fingers through the short strands of his grey hair.

Winding both his arms around him, Iwai let his fingertips drift low and skate along the curves of his backside. If this was how the notorious Phantom Thief beguiled his way through his victims, he couldn’t say he blamed any of them for being so easily led by the dick. Akira had an ass you could bounce a coin off. His fingers dug in harder, squeezing at the plush skin there at the same time he opened his mouth to yield to a demanding tongue. It figured he’d be a bossy little shit even in the bedroom.

In what could only have been about four seconds tops, he was already hard as a rock again. Iwai didn’t find himself minding so much. If he was going to come with the same mortifying enthusiasm of an inexperienced teenager, he might as well have the refractory period of one too. His cock dug up into Akira’s flat abdomen, gripped so tight by lust that he could feel it smearing precum against his skin. Iwai ignored it in favor of reaching for Akira’s instead.

A sweet moan was lost to the inside of his mouth. Iwai squeezed harder and pressed another humid kiss to Akira’s lip before he drew it between his own and let his teeth nip there. It was fucking fascinating to feel the subtle differences between it and a human mouth. The textures were all the same, but his bottom lip was slightly thicker and had less give to it. His teeth couldn’t sink into it quite as deep as he could have with a person. He was weirdly into it.

If Akira was aware of his curious explorations, he gave no indication of it. He merely kissed him back, both his knees planted in the bed and cute little noises bursting out of him each time Iwai tightened his fingers around his erection or brushed his thumb against the very tip of it. Finally, he broke away from Akira’s pretty mouth and bumped their noses together. “You want more? Need fingers or anything?”

Akira actually scoffed at him and shook his head with a smile. “I’m good. Unless you just want to.”

“Hmph. Maybe I do.” Brat.

He shoved hard at Akira’s shoulder and rolled them both over. The sheets stuck to his sweaty back on the way up, but Iwai merely grimaced and pinned Akira down until he was the one splayed out across his dark bedding. He looked perfectly at home there too, just to be obstinate. Iwai snorted in amusement and bent his neck to kiss him again while his hand slipped down between his thighs. With only the tip of his middle finger, he traced small circles against his skin and felt him out for the first time.

Beneath him, Akira pantomimed an amorous little sigh and tilted his head back. “I like your stubble,” he murmured, even as he closed his eyes and rubbed his face against Iwai’s cheek.

“That right? What, you never had a guy with stubble before?”

Akira shook his head and lay back again, lifting both his arms and letting them drape into a lazy cross over the top of his head. “You could say that. Actually, I’ve never ‘had’ anyone before at all. But it’s fine. I don’t need to have kissed someone without it to know I like your stubble.”

“What?!” Iwai sat all the way back and yanked his hand out from between Akira’s thighs. “You’re fuckin’ with me, aren’t you? I thought you were a prostibot.” And hell, even if he wasn’t, no fucking way was someone as exquisitely beautiful as Akira a virgin. Especially when they had a throat that vibrated like that.

Obviously unconcerned by how perturbed Iwai was, Akira shrugged his smooth shoulders and flexed his fingers against his palms. “Me? Nah. I mean, before, yeah. Almost certainly. I remember them saying something about repurposing a sex android for my body, but _I_ never was one. Why did you stop?”

Fuck, was he being serious? Iwai squinted at him and scratched at the edge of his jaw. “You tellin’ me you’ve never been with anyone but me before?”

“Yeah. Why? Is that weird?”

An adorable look of confusion stamped itself across Akira’s face. Iwai definitely didn’t get the vibe he was lying. What would be the point of lying about something like that? Iwai obviously hadn’t given a shit about his presumed history. And if he really was a prostibot then being predisposed to lie about it seemed like a bad call if he was meant to be getting paid for his services. Unless he planned on stealing it in the afterglow. He was a phantom thief, after all.

Still though.

After a bit, Iwai shook his head and dropped his hand back down, squeezing at his silky thigh again before he kissed him. “Nah. I mean -- yeah, it is weird. Dunno why someone as pretty as you would even have a first kiss to give an old man like me. But if that’s what you want, then who am I to complain?”

A dazzlingly bright smile seized Akira, and he lifted his arms again to lock them around Iwai’s neck. “That’s right. You’d better not, or you’ll hurt my feelings.”

Punk ass.

Iwai bent forward and shut him up with a firm kiss. He eased his hand back down and resumed his task from before, stroking him between the legs and slowly easing his middle finger inside of him. Christ, it felt _wet_ like a girl would, but when he slid back out his finger was dry as a bone. Must be a similar material to what they’d used to make his tongue feel wet without actually producing any moisture. Wild.

Feeling braver, he plunged two inside him this time, sinking deeper and exploring him eagerly as Akira held onto his shoulders and kissed him. He was gloriously fucking hot and almost punishly tight, and this was just his fingers. Iwai was almost afraid he wouldn’t be able to get his cock wedged in there.

Not that he wasn’t going to try. Again, he slipped his fingers free and shuffled right up between Akira’s spread thighs where his heavy cock pressed against his skin. “You ready?” he asked, speaking into his ear. Akira shivered cutely at the sensation of his stubble rasping against the shell of it.

“Yeah. I am.”

Iwai believed him. He tilted backwards and got up to his knees, gripping the base of his erection with one hand and using the other to take Akira by the thigh and lift it up high. The very image of his cock pressed flush against his ass was almost enough to get him off a second time right then and there. God damn, it really had been way too long.

He sucked in a sharp breath and began the slow glide forward, pushing with his hips and devouring the sight of him disappearing inside of Akira inch by agonizing inch. The instant he was thrust fully inside him, he felt like an idiot for being worried. Akira took him like a fucking champion.

“You okay?” he asked, lifting his head and letting his thumb graze back and forth against the back of his thigh. He wasn’t surprised to see Akira nod for him. While he was trying desperately hard to stave off his orgasm, Akira lay stretched out on his back with his eyes closed and his chest lifted and both his legs splayed open in a way that suggested he was being treated to a bliss he knew full well he deserved, like some slutty little angel.

Iwai was so in love.

He bent in half and let his nose trace the shape of Akira’s cheek, breathing out and planting a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “‘Course you are.”

Just as Akira had before, Iwai shoved both his hands down into the bedding on either side of his dark head and began to move. He thrust so hard it rocked Akira’s whole body, watching in satisfaction at the way his hair bounced. His body was completely unreal. He was exquisite from his head down to his toes that curled in the air. With his now free hand, he snatched up one of Akira’s ankles and pressed a soft kiss to the side of his foot.

“Mmnh, Iwai…”

He looked up to see Akira’s head tilted back and his cheeks flushed pink as the inside of a pomelo. Androids may not be able to sweat, but he was damn grateful they could still blush like that. Besides, he was sweating enough for the both of them. Iwai squeezed at his delicate ankle and picked up the pace, thrusting harder and faster just to watch his cock bounce the same way his curls did.

Pretty as it was to watch, though, Iwai was determined not to embarrass himself a second time. He fastened one hand around Akira’s erection and stroked in between thrusts. Just as before, he could feel the subtle rush of liquid beneath the pad of his thumb where he caressed the ‘vein’ there along the underside. Maybe he wasn’t a sexbot, but he might well still have all the limitations of one, which included not being able to get off without some help.

Iwai pumped with one hand and held his thigh with the other, keeping Akira steady as he drilled him right into his fancy new mattress. Fucking A, there really was nothing better in the world than making the quiet ones shatter under the throes of pleasure. Akira was a noisy mess beneath him, his legs spread wide and his fingers clutching at the slick skin of Iwai’s tattooed back.

Just a little more. So close.

So close.

He clamped down hard at the base of Akira’s cock at the same time his long legs locked hard around his waist, which was about all the warning he had to brace himself for what was to come. Vibrations like a goddamned buzzsaw lit him up from the inside out. His orgasm shot out of him with the force of a geyser and made his fingers spasm around the shape of Akira’s erection. Pleasure swamped him. Aftershocks thundered down his spine, and his vision blurred at the edges. Iwai folded in half and face-planted right into his sternum.

When he opened his eyes again, Iwai blinked muzzily at his wall. Fuck’s sake, it felt like he’d just woken up from a bender. What the hell? He pushed against the bedding and sat up halfway to see Akira lying beneath him with an expression on him like a cat lounging inside an empty birdcage. Iwai glared at him. “...What just happened?”

Akira tittered at him and kissed the side of his face. “Turnabout is fair play, Iwai.”

“Did I just fuckin’ black out?”

Christ almighty.

He collapsed onto his back with a heavy groan, heaving for breath and scrubbing at his heavy eyelids. “You’re too much for me, y’know.”

“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”

Iwai felt him roll over onto his side, so he cracked one eye open to peek at him. He’d die of shame if Akira hadn’t come after all that, so he was relieved to see that his pale chest was streaked with evidence of his own orgasm. Matching him, he rolled over too and cupped Akira’s face to kiss him once more. “Guess it was a compliment.”

The smile on his face was so cute it disarmed him a little. How could he look that sweet after that fucking succubus move he just pulled? Iwai felt like he’d just shot a good ten years of his own life force inside him.

“Lemme clean you up. Er, how thorough should I be? ...Does your ass come out too?”

“Heh. Maybe.” Akira’s dark eyes sparkled in sly amusement, but he at least held still so Iwai could dab his chest clean with some tissues. When he dropped onto his back again a few minutes later, exhaustion swallowed him whole. He closed his eyes and went still, moving only to shift his arm as Akira rolled up into his side and rested his face against his ribs.

He was gonna sleep like a baby after that.


	18. Chapter 18

* * *

The soft sensation of lips brushing against his own had him stirring in his bed. Iwai shifted and squeezed his eyes shut tighter, then rolled his head and opened them with a faint groan. “Akira...?”

He sat up as black tailcoats disappeared from the edge of his window and leaned back, disoriented as hell. God damn, he was tired. It was still completely dark out. What time even was it? And where had Akira gone? Squinting, he groped for his Tab and brought it right up to his face.

Three AM.

And he had a message alert.

Iwai shoved the meat of his palm against his eyes and opened it up to read it. He hoped it was a message from Akira letting him know where he’d gone, but he was disappointed to see that it looked like some bullshit advertisement spam. He almost deleted it without actually reading it, but the signature at the bottom stopped him cold.

_Iwai Munehisa,_

_It takes a lot of balls to steal from a thief. Out of respect for your mastery of our shared craft, I’ll make no attempt to take back what you stole from me. As far as I’m concerned, you won it fair and square._

_But know this: letting you keep a stolen prize isn’t the same as allowing your theft to go unchallenged. I’m looking forward to returning the favor._

_After all, sometimes an eye for an eye truly is the only way to right an injustice._

_Yours always,_  
_The Phantom Thief of Hearts_

For several seconds, Iwai stared at it, rereading the text over and over. Then he snorted and dropped back onto the bed with a stupid smile on his face.

It figured that the Phantom Thief would write a love confession the same way he’d write a ransom note.

Only his Akira.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The real penetration test was his heart all along.
> 
> Thank you guys so much for sticking with me, even after my schedule got completely derailed. Hearing from you all was such a privilege. I treasure every kudos and comment.
> 
> You can find me on Twitter [@rad_iata](https://twitter.com/rad_iata) and on Tumblr at [habenaria-radiata](https://habenaria-radiata.tumblr.com).
> 
> Thanks for reading! ♥


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